
Boole 



CormM?-- 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 




KING 



( 



Allegories of Genesis 



BY 

Thomas A. King 

Rector of 

The Church of the Redeemer 

LAKEWOOD, OHIO 

Author of Pearls from the Wonder Book, 

Pearls of Great Price, The Story 

of the Bible, etc. 




/rt/r 



Vublisfod by C. M. BUNSEN 

THE BRITTON PRINTING COMPANY, CLEVELAND, O. 



Copyright, 1922 

by 
C. M. BUNSEN 



©CI.A6F6706 



NOV -6 ;922 

1 • J 







PREFACE 

These short chapters were written from week to week 
from notes used in a course of mid-week lectures given to 
my Congregation. 

The interpretation of these early chapters of Genesis 
given in this little book lays no claim to originality; nor 
has it been the aim of the Author to be critical. He has 
followed the opening of the internal sense of them as given 
by the Lord through the divinely illumined mind of His 
called and prepared servant, Emmanuel Swedenborg. 

The lectures were productive of much good in my par- 
ish; and letters from England and from all parts of the 
United States, have come to me urging their publication 
in book form. 

I therefore, send forth this little volume thankful for 

the opportunity to be of service to the cause of the Lord's 

New Church. 

Thomas A. King, 

Lakewood, Ohio 
July 15, 1922. 



FOREWORD 

The early chapters of Genesis have been the cause of 
many controversies in the Church and the world. The 
reason is that these Genesis stories have been regarded as 
narratives of actual events of history. It was believed 
and taught in the Church that creation took place about 
4000 years B. C; that it was completed in six days; that 
the first man and woman were then created; and that the 
stories of their life in Eden, the great ages of their des- 
cendants, and the account of Noah and the Flood, all 
took place as described in Genesis. 

When the sciences of cosmogony, geology, and arch- 
aeology, were developed, it was seen that the antiquity of 
the world and of man was immensely greater than the 
time assigned by the theologians. A great controversy 
arose between science and the Church on this subject. It 
is now generally conceded that the early chapters of Gene- 
sis cannot be regarded as historical. Consequently the 
question arises, How shall we regard them, and can we still 
believe them to be a part of the Word of God and Divine? 

If Swedenborg's teaching had been accepted that 
these early chapters of Genesis are non-historical but 
Symbolical or representative, there would not have been 
any controversy concerning them. He placed the book of 
Genesis in a new light, which clearly manifests the Divine 
nature of these Genesis stories. In order to see that 
these stories, now often called myths, constitute an essen- 
tial part of the Word of God, we must know; 

First: That there was a Divine revelation or Word 
prior to the time of Moses. This Word was the source of 
the religions of many nations, and from it were derived the 
many traditions and fables concerning creation, the Garden 
of Eden, and the Flood. Swedenborg says: "There was a 
Word among the Ancients, written by correspondences. 
The ancients among whom that Word existed were in the 
land of Canaan, and the kingdoms on its borders, as Syria, 
Mesopotamia, Arabia, Assyria, Chaldea, Egypt, Zidon, 
Tyre and Nineveh. All these kingdoms were in representa- 



tive worship, and hence in the knowledge of correspond- 
ences. The wisdom of that time was from that know- 
ledge; and by means of it, they had interior perception and 
communication with the heavens. But because that Word 
was full of correspondences that were significative of 
celestial and spiritual things in a remote manner, and 
hence began to be falsified by many, therefore, in the 
Lord's Divine Providence, it disappeared in process of 
time, and at length was lost." 

Second: Moses quoted the first seven chapters of 
Genesis from this earlier Word. Other books of that Word 
are referred to in our Word and quotations are made from 
them. Such as, The Book of the Wars of Jehovah, The 
Ennunciators, and the Book of Jasher. These were books 
of the ancient Word. The accounts of Creation, Eden, 
and the Flood, were turned into fables by many nations, 
and in course of time these polytheistic conceptions of 
God arose among the nations. 

Third: This Ancient Word was written according to 
the style of the ancient people, in which they embodied 
their religious and philosophical ideas in symbols and 
correspondences. This style of writing spread among 
many ancient nations; and with the Greeks, Romans and 
other nations, it took the form of fables. The mythologies 
of many nations originally were derived from the symbol- 
ism of the ancients. Natural things were used as symbols 
of corresponding spiritual things. This style not only was 
in the Ancient Word but is also embodied in our Word. 

In writing on "The Allegories of Genesis' ' Dr. King 
is performing an important use to the Church and the World. 
In the dust of mere literal controversy the fact has been 
lost sight of, that the Word itself is spiritual and has a 
spiritual content. Dr. King is well known as an interesting 
expositor of the spiritual sense of the Word, we heartily 
recommend this new effort to the public, feeling confident 
that the publication will open the Word and bring to light 
the riches stored therein. "The opening of the Word 
giveth light, it giveth understanding to the simple." 

John Whitehead. 

7 Winter Street, 

Arlington, Mass. 



CONTENTS 

Chapter Page 

1 The First Day of Creation 7 

2 The Second Day of Creation 11 

3 The Third Day of Creation 16 

4 The Fourth Day of Creation 20 

5 The Fifth Day of Creation 24 

6 The Sixth Day of Creation 28 

7 The Sabbath Day of Creation 33 

8 The Creation of Adam 37 

9 The Garden Eastward in Eden 41 

10 The River of Eden parted into Four Heads 46 

11 The Sleep of Adam: The Creation of Eve 51 

12 The Serpent of Eden 56 

13 The Curse upon the Serpent, the Woman and 
the Ground 60 

14 The Expulsion from Eden 65 

15 Cain and Abel. 70 

16 The offerings of Cain and Abel 74 

17 The Death of Abel: Cain a Fugitive and Vaga- 
bond 79 

18 Cain in the Land of Nod : The Birth of Enoch . . 84 

19 The Birth of Seth: His Descendants: Enoch's 
Walk with God 89 

20 The Sons of God: The Daughters of Men: The 
Giants of the Ancient World. 94 

21 The Building of the Ark: The Clean and the 
Unclean Beasts 98 

22 The Flood: Noah and His Family Saved 104 

23 The Noetic Church : The Abating of the Waters : 
The Resting of the Ark on the Mountain 109 

24 The Raven and the Dove 113 

25 The Bow in the Cloud .119 

26 Noah's Vineyard: His Drunkenness And His 
Exposure 124 

27 The Sin of Ham: The Curse on Canaan 128 

28 The Generations of Shem, Ham and Japheth. . 133 

29 Nimrod and the Beginning of His Kingdom. . .139 

30 The Journey from the East; the Tower of 
Babel and the Confusion of Tongues 144 



THE FIRST DAY OF CREATION 

Heaven and earth are used in the Bible as symbols- 
heaven as the symbol of the spiritual mind, and earth as 
the symbol of the natural mind. Regeneration, which is 
the subject treated of in this story of creation, is the order- 
ly formation and development of the distinct planes of 
life that are involved in the structure of these two minds. 
The spiritual mind is formed of three distinct degrees, the 
celestial, spiritual and natural. The natural mind is also 
constituted of three degrees, the rational, scientific and 
sensual. These two minds, with their degrees of life, con- 
stitute the difference between man and the mere animal 
for the mere animal possesses only the sensual degree, with 
something that makes an approach to the scientific, but 
is wholly without the rational and the three degrees con- 
stituent of the spiritual mind. 

This is why it is said: "In the beginning, God created 
the heaven and the earth." Regeneration begins with 
these two minds. It consists in the opening of the spirit- 
ual mind by which the natural mind is reformed and 
brought into order and completely subordinated to the 
spiritual mind. In the beginning of man's regeneration 
the natural mind (the earth) is mere vacuity and empti- 
ness. It is not in the form of heaven and is empty of all 
genuine good. It is on a level with the world, and is the 
seat of hereditary evil, its life consisting in the love of self 
and the world. It must, therefore, be reformed and filled 
with new affections and thoughts. 

The natural mind is also in darkness. It has no com- 



prehension of spiritual things. It is of the earth, earthly. 
It is a great abyss; and over the face of this abyss, dark- 
ness broods. What a darkness it is! God, the Divine 
Word, the life after death, in fact, all the great truths of 
religion, are in total darkness to the natural mind. It 
knows only the natural world, and sees only the things 
that minister to its depraved loves. 

If in the beginning, a spiritual mind had not been 
formed in man, above his natural mind, he never could 
have been raised above the animal plane of life. But 
"in the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth." 
By heaven is meant man's spiritual mind formed not of 
nature nor of the deposits of the world through the bodily 
senses, but of the substance of the inner spiritual world, 
with deposits from heaven, through the ministry of angels. 
These heavenly deposits are called, in the church writings, 
"Remains." 

These deposits are stored up in all children, whether 
they were born in the church or out of it; whether they 
were born of pious parents or of impious parents. They 
are spiritual things — states of good, of innocence, formed 
in all, during childlife, while the mind which is on a level 
with heaven, is open, tender and plastic. 

Our Blessed Saviour announced this truth of the Father's 
provision of these good states for child-life, when He said: 
"See that ye offend not one of these little ones; for verily 
I say unto you, that in heaven, their angels do always be- 
hold the face of my Father." The implantation and storing 
of these remains make a spiritual life possible to all men. 
They are really man's heredity from his heavenly Father. 

Salvation, regeneration and the consequent subordina- 

8 



tion of all life to the Divine motive of living, become poss- 
ible to all men because of this work done by the Lord 
through the angels during childhood. 

Here lies the ground of hope for the salvation of the 
human race. It is the means by which the All-Good 
Father shall realize His end in the creation of man — a 
heaven of angels from the human race. 

"Why bowest thou, O soul of mine, 

Crushed by ancestral sin? 
Thou hast a nobler heritage 

Which bids thee victory win. 
The tainted past may bring forth flowers, 

As blossomed Aaron's rod; 
No legacy of sin annuls 

Heredity from God." 

But these remains must be awakened. They are the 
Lord's own in man; and He alone knows how and when to 
find them. Thus it is said: "And the spirit of God moved 
upon the face of the waters." The Divine mercy of the 
Lord broods over these remains in man. It awakens them. 
The things that the Lord has hidden and treasured up in 
man, how precious they are! "More to be desired are 
they than gold, yea than much fine gold." They are what 
make every human being sacred. The sins which grow up 
and disfigure and mar human life — truly they are ugly, 
and sometimes men seem so hopelessly involved in them, 
yet such human beings have these sacred treasures stored 
up in them by the Lord. And the time comes when the 
spirit of our common Lord moves upon the face of these 
waters. These hidden treasures are the Lord's in man. 
They are not anything he has acquired by his conscious 
efforts. How beautifully does all this shine through Dr. 
Watt's lullaby: 

9 



"Hush, my babe! 
Lie still and slumber; 

Holy angels guard thy bed; 
Heavenly blessings without number 
Are gently falling oh thy head." 

Yes, these are the face of the waters in this story of the 
first day of creation. And gently does the Father's spirit 
move upon them. In ways recognized and in ways unre- 
cognized, the Lord's Holy Spirit is moving — brooding over 
these things of heaven stored in man's spiritual mind. 
And the time comes to all, who hear His voice, when 
they are awakened. It may not always come in this life; 
but in the intermediate world of spirits, if not on earth, all 
in whom the way to their remains is not effectually closed 
by intellectual confirmation in evil, will hear the Divine 
voice and open the door; will feel the Divine brooding 
and yield to the Father's tender love. 

What a need there is for parents to know this blessed 
teaching of the church! For knowing it, they can intelli- 
gently co-operate with the Lord and the angels. These 
remains are "the living creatures" to which the gospel is 
to be preached. Will the church ever learn this lesson? 
Conscious of our great intellectual stores of doctrines, we 
vainly imagine that our mission is to intellectually con- 
vince men that what we are offering them is the truth. 
Let it be said, for it is true, our failure to call the remnant 
into the church is not due to our failure to convince men 
of the rationality of the church's teaching, but to our not 
reaching, by a loving and gentle spirit, their remains — "the 
living creatures" in their hearts. Our efforts to convert 
men are intellectual and cold. We neglect the heart. I 
am not deprecating the teaching of doctrine. Far from it. 

10 



But doctrine must be drawn from the Lord's Word, con- 
firmed by it, and come to men with all the warmth of the 
Divine Heart, in an appeal to what is of the Lord in them. 

This will reach and uncover the golden side of their life. 
"Deep will answer unto deep." A great light will dawn 
upon man through such an appeal. It will be the light of 
their heavenly Father's face; and in His light they will see 
light. Ah ! this awakening of a human soul — what a mo- 
mentous event it is! It is the dawning of a light in which 
one sees the Lord Jesus as one's God and Saviour; in 
which one sees oneself as a spiritual being; in which one 
sees the spiritual possibilities of life — the beginning of the 
great creation within. "And God said let there be light, 
and there was light.' ' 

THE SECOND DAY OF CREATION 

The awakening of the things good and true that were 
implanted and stored away during childhood, and the 
dawning of the light of God upon the mind, brings the con- 
sciousness that there are in the mind states of knowledge 
that are from heaven and states of knowledge that are 
from the world. That which brings this consciousness 
is the rational perception of the duality of the mind. This 
perception at first is far from being clear; it is in fact very 
dim, but it enables a man to realize that he has, lying 
above what is natural in himself, a higher mind, or self, 
which demands, for its satisfaction, growth and culture, 
something the world cannot supply. 

This dawning internal rational perception is what is 
meant by these words: "And God said, Let there be 
an expanse in the midst of the waters." It is a rational 

11 



perception, but it is in the formative state. It is not, at 
that time, lifted up and clearly discriminated and inte- 
llectually distinguished from the general perceptions of the 
mind. It is, at first, in the midst of the waters. 

But growth is the law of the Divine life in man's life; 
therefore this rational perception grows and expands. This 
growth is largely dependent upon instruction — upon instruc- 
tion suited and accommodated to the mind's state of recep- 
tion. What a wide field for reflection this law, as it re- 
spects the growth of this rational perception, opens to the 
church ! 

May it not be true that one, and perhaps the most fruit- 
ful cause, of the Church's loss of so many of its own young 
people, is due to the Church's attempt to teach them the- 
ology} The mind is a spiritual organism created in dis- 
tinct planes; and may it not be possible that the church has 
made the fatal mistake of forcing a degree of instruction 
upon its young people that they are wholly unprepared to 
receive? There is nothing more sacred than a young life, 
just opening to the realization of something deeper than 
the world is able to give; and the attempt to feed that 
budding life with instruction drawn from Swedenborg's 
"Divine Love and Wisdom" or "Earths in the Universe,' 
or Burnham's " Discrete Degrees," is only to confuse and 
swamp it. 

It might prove useful to us, as a church, if we would 
study more seriously and wisely the New-Church psy- 
chology, for it would save us from these mistakes. 

Rational perceptions are formed slowly; and instruc- 
tion must be suited to the mind in which they are grow- 
ing. Simple doctrine, drawn from the letter of the Word, 

12 



and presented affirmatively and affectionately, and always 
with reference to the sacred religious life that is awaken- 
ing in the young people, never fails to interest and hold 
them. The deeper things of the spiritual sense of the 
Word — of the philosophy of doctrine — must wait. Their 
time will come; and the church must wait until her 
young people are capable of receiving them rationally. 

While the expanse is in the midst of the waters, the 
simple Bible story, illustrated in its relation to the awak- 
ening religious nature, is all that is needed. If the church 
deals thus wisely with the opening, budding minds of its 
young people, there will come the opening of a deeper 
rational perception in them. The expanse will divide be- 
tween the waters in the waters. The faculty of classifica- 
tion will be developed. Things will be distinguished from 
each other. 

Let the church watch this development, and adapt its 
instruction accordingly. This is the real argument for 
the graded lesson in the Sunday school. As the waters, 
the knowledges that are in the mind, begin to be classified, 
by rational thinking, guided by true and suitable instruc- 
tion, the church, in her capacity as teacher, can adapt the 
truth to the new and higher plane of reception that is 
forming. The simpler lessons of the spiritual sense may 
then be given; but always shown to be in the very letter 
of the Bible. Then, too, simple doctrine may be taught, 
but always from the letter of the Lord's Word, and not in 
any abstract way. 

This will divide between the waters in the waters. 
Knowledge that could only come from heaven, through the 
Lord's Word, will be distinguished from knowledge that 

13 



comes from the world and that belongs to the world. It 
is all a gradual unfoldment of the mind. 

And so, there comes a time when the waters, which 
were divided, attain perfect classification — a time when truth, 
derived by revelation, and truth derived through the exer- 
ercise of the natural mind, is clearly distinguished, the one 
from the other. 

This is what is meant by these words: "And God made 
the expanse, and divided between the waters which were 
above the expanse and the waters which were under 
the expanse. ,, Until this discrimination is made, it is not 
clearly seen that there is an internal man and that the 
things that are in the internal man are goods and truths 
that are from the Lord alone. Waters above the expanse! 
What do they mean other than the truths that come from 
the Lord? The rational faculty of perception does not 
originate spiritual truth. The Divine and spiritual truths, 
with which the internal mind is imbued, are above reason. 
The rational degree is an intermediate degree. The things 
that are proper to the natural mind, such as the know- 
ledge belonging to the sensuous plane, and the scientifics 
that are learned in the schools, are below, under the reason; 
and there is a side of the rational that looks down upon, 
orders and subordinates them. They are from the world 
and are not matters of revelation. They serve to teach 
man how to preserve his body, how to form and cultivate 
his natural mind, how to become a civic and moral man, 
and a useful member of civil society. They are all under 
the expanse. But the waters which are above the expanse! 
They are not on a level with nature. They are truths 
that have come through the channel of the spiritual world, 
the Word of God, and the church. They are above the 

14 



reason but not contrary to reason; for as there is a side to 
the rational degree of the mind that opens down to the 
stored states of the natural mind, so there is a side to it 
that opens up to the stored states of good and truth in the 
internal mind. 

When the rational perception has attained to this degree 
of development, it calls for distinct doctrinal instruction 
and guidance. Here is the place for the doctrinal class — 
here opens the opportunity to use the church writings as 
books of instruction. 

But in doing this, the church must not play the role of 
the theological seminary. The church is to prepare men for 
useful living, and her instruction must have the making of 
good lives as its end. The world has very little interest in 
and use for a doctrinal gymnast : and it has less for a church 
that resolves itself into a theological gymnasium. 

This is not meant as a disparagement of those who 
make a deep study of the church writings, that is largely 
a matter of inclination and taste. What I am advocating 
is the religious life, guided by the Lord's Word, as opened 
and explained in the doctrines of the church. 

That this may be realized, the church in her teaching 
capacity, must put men in the possession of the light that 
can enable them to distinguish between spiritual good and 
natural good; between life lived from regard to self and 
life lived from regard to God; between truth from heaven, 
through revelation, and truth from the world. This is 
the mission of the church. Regeneration — the new life — 
that must be her aim. For this the Word, the Doctrines, 
yea all the means of grace, exist. 

IS 



THE THIRD DAY OF CREATION 

The rational perception that there is involved in man 
two minds, an external mind for this world and an internal 
mind for the spiritual world, puts us in a position to see 
that all spiritual knowledge, the truth and good of heaven, 
inflow from the Lord through the internal mind into the 
external and are stored up in the memory for use in our 
coming regeneration. 

The memory is therefore a most important department 
of the mind. It must be formed and stored with truths, 
learned from without, before there can be any distinct 
reasoning or deep thinking. Children are inspired by the 
Lord, through their guardian angels, with the love of know- 
ing facts, and they are gifted with the mental organ of 
memory, in which they may be implanted and stored up. 
The will and the memory are active long before the under- 
standing is in any degree developed. The will to learn, 
the love of knowing, must come in order that one may 
learn, and there must be a receptacle of the knowledge 
that is acquired, and this is the memory, capacious to 
receive and retentive to retain what is learned. 

The memory is therefore the "one place' ' into which the 
waters under the heavens are gathered. For think — the 
waters under the heavens are the truths acquired by study 
and instruction — the truths that are stored up after they 
are learned. During this period there is afforded to par- 
ents and teachers the golden opportunity of implanting 
in children's minds the knowledge of the letter of the 
Lord's Word. There is nothing more important than 
this. Parents and teachers should not do the least 
thing to disturb a child's implicit belief in the letter 

16 



of the Bible stories. They should be taught to the child 
mind in the form the Lord has put them. And not only 
should the Bible stories be taught in the form we find 
them in the letter of the Word, but certain portions of the 
Word should be committed to memory, such as the Lord's 
Prayer, the Ten Blessings, the Ten Commandments, and 
many of the shorter Psalms and the sayings of the Lord 
in the Gospels. The doing of this is the gathering of the 
waters into one place. 

Rational thinking about these things will come later, 
and then doctrine about them can be taught. When this 
state arrives, there will form in the mind a plane for the 
reception of the Divine seed, from which will spring up 
and grow the life of heaven. This plane, or soil, is what 
is meant by the appearance of the dry land or earth. 

The beginnings of the spiritual life — how interesting 
they are! God said: "Let 'the earth bring forth." Up 
to this point, God has done every thing, but now the 
earth, which has risen out of the waters, is called upon to 
bring forth. Childhood is a period of preparation for the 
spiritual life. This is what makes child life so sacred. 
But when the memory is stored with truths, and the under- 
standing of them in their relation to life has been formed, 
man is then capable of co-operating with the Lord. He 
can hear, understand and obey the Divine commands. He 
has come into his own responsible life. He is, spiritually, 
of age, and can act as of himself. He can receive and be- 
come conscious of God's operation in his soul, and is able 
to co-operate with the regenerative endeavor of the Divine 
Spirit. Thus God says: "Let the earth bring forth." 

What is brought forth at first is very tender and feeble. 
It is called, in this story, "the tender grass." Self-com- 

17 



pulsion is the first conscious step man takes in his effort 
to co-operate with the Lord's endeavor to regenerate him. 
The natural man is born into the love of evil; and his 
natural inclination is to those things which were habits 
of life in his parents. This is not the old doctrine of origi- 
nal sin, for no one is born into sin. It is the doctrine of 
heredity — the fact that we inherit from parents and ancest- 
ors the love of self and the world. These two evil loves 
are the very life of our natural mind. This evil life must 
be forsaken; we must act against and reject it if we would 
come into the life that makes heaven. This is what our 
Lord meant when He said: " Except a man hate his father 
and mother, yea, his own life also, he cannot be my dis- 
ciple." And self -compulsion, self-imposed obedience tc 
the Ten Commandments, is the first step. The spiritua 
life that comes as the result of this self-compulsion i 
what is meant by the " tender grass." 

The church must learn to deal gently and patiently 
with this state. There is much of self in it, and its motive 
is very external, but it is something, it is a beginning. 
How thankful we should be that the tender grass has no 
seed in itself. It appears in the beginning, serves its use, 
passes away and makes room for something higher. 

This higher form of spiritual living is represented by 
the "herb yielding seed." A higher motive for life comes 
and a more spiritual thinking and doing follows. The 
habit of obedience is formed. The truth is delightful. 
We love it, and do it because of our love for it. A new 
life center is formed. The love of the Lord and the neigh- 
bor becomes our very life. We have lost our life for the 
Lord's sake, and have found His life and made it our life. 
The natural man is being put under the reign of the Lord's 

18 



truth. The herb yielding seed has sprung up, and is 
growing in the soul. 

But something more than the herb comes in this day 
of man's spiritual creation. The tree bearing fruit makes 
its appearance. There comes the perception that all truth, 
all good, is from the Lord. This is the tree of the third 
day. How patiently the Lord waits for us to come into 
this state! He lets us, in the beginning, think that we 
are thinking the truth and doing good from ourselves, 
because He knows that at first we cannot act otherwise. 
And so He leads us on step by step, like the loving and 
kind Father that He is, until the tender grass and herb 
states are lived through, and then He causes this tree 
this perception, that all truth is from Him, that all good 
flows in from Him, to grow up in the mind. What a 
revelation it is to us! How the very thought of it humil- 
iates self! How it exalts God! It brings a new state of 
life with it. It bears fruit. This was not so of the tender 
grass, nor of the herb. But of the tree it is said: "And 
the tree bearing fruit after its kind, whose seed was in itself 
after its kind." The fruit the tree bears is the fruit of 
repentance. For we are told in the writings of the church 
that this third state is one of repentance. In this state a 
man sees the evils that are in his natural mind — evils of 
heredity and evils that he has acquired by the wrong acts 
of his life. It is the state of self-revelation. 

Repentance follows — a repentance that is deep and sin- 
cere. For in this state a man not only sees his evils, but 
he acknowledges them, makes himself guilty before God, 
confesses them to the Lord, implores forgiveness of them, 
and then desists from them and enters upon a new life. 
And when they rise up he turns from them and seeks 

19 



Divine aid in being withheld from them. This is the 
fruit the tree bears. In this way the Lord introduces us 
into the spiritual life, and communicates to us the inward 
joy of heaven in a peace that passes all understanding, 
that is unspeakable and full of glory. 



THE FOURTH DAY OF CREATION 

Regeneration is the progressive development of the Di- 
vine life in the human soul. It is a spiritual creation, for 
when it is finished man stands forth a new creature. The 
old carnal life — the life of loving himself and the world — 
has been displaced by the new life — the life of loving the 
Lord and the neighbor. 

No one begins regeneration with a deep love for the 
Lord, nor with a clear and living faith. The light of the 
Divine truth dawns upon the mind, and one sees oneself 
in contrast with the purity and the requirements of the 
truth; and as the truth points, with directing finger, straight 
to the duty to be done, one finds that one must compel 
one's natural man to do it. This is the beginning of the 
creation of God in the soul. 

But faithfulness to duty, daily acting against the life-im- 
pulses of the lower self, leads one on and on to that state 
in which one begins to feel the warmth of a living love in 
the heart and a clear bright faith in the Lord and the 
realities of the inner life. The sun and the moon of the 
fourth day are this love and this faith set in the internal 
mind of the regenerating man. A man comes into this 
state by growth. The natural sun is therefore the symbol 
of the Lord's love given to man to be in him, his love of 
God and man, and the center of his life — the glowing orb, 

20 



round which everything of his life must revolve, like plan- 
ets round the sun. It is the greater luminary set in his 
mind; for of all graces, love is the greatest. "Love is the 
fulfilling of the law." "He that dwelleth in love, dwells 
in God, for God is love." 

This is the sun of the soul. This sun comes to rule 
over the day. The regenerating man has his days and 
nights. It is day in the soul when he is awake and spirit- 
ually active; when the Lord, the Word, the church, the 
spiritual life and all that pertains to heaven are close and 
real to his consciousness. His soul is warmed by the 
Divine Sun and his mind enlightened by the light of the 
great love of God that is shining within him. We all 
have these day states. Then everything is bright and 
beautiful. God is near ; the Holy Word glows with warmth ; 
the church is a great reality, grand and beautiful; the 
sermon is full of instruction and help; the Holy Commu- 
nion is the Sacrament of the presence of the Divine Human- 
ity ; and the members of the church come close in the bonds 
of a real spiritual brotherhood. This is the day time of 
regeneration; and the sun of the Divine love rules over 
that day. 

But it is not always day in the soul of the man who is 
following the Lord in the regeneration. He has his nights 
as well as his days. It is night in the world, when the 
earth turns away from the sun. It is night in the soul 
when one turns away from the Lord and inclines to one's 
selfhood. We do this. Then the sun of the soul is riot 
seen and its warmth is not felt. It is night. But in the 
case of the regenerating man it is not a night of thick, 
black darkness. The moon of faith rises high and full 
in the sky of his soul. He sees and walks by faith. The 

21 



love of his day states is still there; he is simply in an ob- 
scure state. And in that state, faith reflects the light of 
love as the moon reflects the light of the sun. He still 
believes, although he does not feel the glowing warmth 
of love. God, the Word and the church are still realities. 
His faith is bright and clear. This is the moon that rules 
the night. And this faith is living. It is not mere intel- 
lectual assent to dogma. It is the sours sight of eternal 
things — a belief founded upon a rational conviction of the 
truth. 

So far as such a man's daily life, in its outward associa- 
tions, is concerned, no change has occurred. He prays to 
His Father in heaven; he reads daily the Lord's Word; 
he attends faithfully to his duties as a churchman; he 
humbly partakes of the Holy Communion and in all ex- 
ternal things acts as a Christian should. Only the man 
himself, the Lord and the angels know that it is night. He 
does not commit the folly of forsaking these things. He 
holds on to them, even if the love of them has grown less 
warm. 

The man who turns away from and neglects the Lord 
and the church because he has come into night, shows, in 
an unmistakable way, that he never had any real love for 
his Heavenly Father and spiritual mother. There are 
men who mistake mere enthusiasm for genuine love. We 
have all seen them. The doctrines of the church solve 
their intellectual problems and they are fired by zeal for 
the church. They are zealous for the cause of the truth. 
But opposition arises, or persecution for the truth's sake; 
the world is indifferent to the things that seem so clear to 
them ; night comes on — dark states in which their first love 
grows less ardent, and finally ends in cold. Then, they 

22 



begin to doubt the truth, to question the Divine revelation. 
They are seen less frequently at the church service and 
finally sink into utter indifference. What does such a 
happening mean? It means that they never did really 
see the Lord as He is; that they never did really see the 
internal things of the Word and church. Their state was 
an external one — one of the understanding merely. But 
the man who has really come into day states who has in- 
mostly felt the movement and inspiration of the Divine 
love in his heart, when night comes to him, looks up to 
the moon and orders his walk and conversation by the 
light of faith- — the lesser luminary, that rules the night. 

But this is not all. It is said of God: "He made the 
stars also. " The stars are distant suns, and the light 
from them travels over immense fields of ether in 
reaching our earth. They are God's beautiful symbols of 
spiritual knowledge which has come down to us from the 
past. The star the wise men saw was a spiritual star and 
symbolized the knowledge of the Lord's coming which had 
been handed down by tradition from the dim long ago. 
Much is said about stars in the Bible; and always they 
stand for the knowledge of spiritual things. 

There come states to the regenerating man, in which 
faith is clouded — in which he cannot see clearly the Divine 
verities of religion. But no sane man loses his knowledge 
of spiritual things, especially his knowlege of what is taught 
in the Ten Commandments— his knowledge of what is 
right, of what is wrong. 

Love may grow cold, faith may be darkened, but the know- 
ledge that evils are to be shunned because they are sins 
against God abides. "Re made the stars, also." The 
light that reaches a man from the spiritual stars — the know- 

23 



ledge of what he is to shun as sin and do as good — comes 
in the darkest night. It never fails. 

And if in such a state one lives by star-light, shunning 
and turning away from the evils forbidden in the Lord's 
commandments and doing the good things they com- 
mand, it will not be long before the moon will rise again 
in one's mental sky, giving one the light of faith, and later 
on, if one is faithful, the sun will rise again, and the Divine 
love fill and warm the heart. It is all wonderful — all the 
Divine guidance of the human lives that are committed to 
Him whose watchful care is never withdrawn from His 
child. 

THE FIFTH DAY OF CREATION 

It requires a long time for one to realize that the good 
one does and the truth one believes and speaks are from 
the Lord alone. The consciousness that all genuine good 
and truth are from the Lord does not come until man has 
formed in his internal mind the principle of love to the 
Lord and the principle of faith in the Lord. These two 
principles are meant by the two great luminaries, the sun 
and the moon. These spiritual luminaries, set high in the 
heavens within, begin to give a living quality to the truths 
that are in the mind. These truths are meant by the 
waters, which are now commanded to bring forth abund- 
antly the moving creatures that have life. The religious 
truths that have been acquired by instruction are stored 
in the memory like waters in the sea; and now that the 
sun of love and the moon of faith have been set in the mind, 
life from the Lord, through them, is communicated to the 
religious truths, which up to this point, have existed as 
mere scientifics in the memory. Warmth and light from 

24 



above penetrate the waters of the mind, and the regener- 
ating man begins to act from higher and purer principles. 
He is gifted with a higher motive. The change is an 
internal one, affecting the willing and thinking, thus giv- 
ing a living quality to all the more external affections and 
thoughts. 

The fishes and the fowls, that the waters are said to have 
brought forth, are symbols of what religious truths in our 
minds bring forth when brought under the influence of 
love and faith. Fishes are among the lowest order of 
animal life, and represent the moving, the life of the affec- 
tions, the beginning of a real love for the genuine good of 
heaven. This affection is of a very external character at first ; 
still there is something of the warmth and life of heaven 
in it. It is all we are capable of producing at this state. 
We must not expect too much in the beginning. Young 
people in the church are sometimes treated as if they were 
old in the regenerate life; and we often expect of them 
the high spiritual affections that belong to an advanced 
state of regeneration. This is a mistake, and has led to 
sad results. 

Their first awakened affections are external ; and as they 
are interested only in the things that are on the plane of 
the affections and that are active in their minds, they 
must, therefore, be held in touch with the church by the 
things that appeal to them. They cannot enter under- 
standingly and affectionately into the deep things of the 
spiritual sense of the Word, nor into the depths of the doc- 
trines of the church. They are not prepared for these 
things. But they are interested in the letter of the Word, 
and in the simple teaching of life in it. They are interest- 
ed in a true and beautiful church service, in which they 

25 



can take a part. It feeds their awakening religious affec- 
tions; it holds and interests them. This is the explana- 
tion of the constantly growing interest in the church and 
its teaching our young people evince. The church, like 
a wise mother, adapts all its offices to their state of mind. 

But the waters brought forth not only fishes but fowl 
flying above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. 
The birds are symbols of spiritual thoughts. At first our 
thought of spiritual things has much that is natural con- 
nected with it, and has to be freed from what is natural 
before it can rise above the earth and freely soar in the 
open expanse of heaven. 

Scientists tell us that in the beginning the birds were 
part reptile and part bird, but that in the process of the 
evolution of animal forms of life, a complete separation 
was made, the reptile branching out in one direction as 
a typical reptile, and the bird rising out of the water as a 
typical bird. This doctrine of science has a beautiful 
correspondence. The reptile is the symbol of sensuous 
thinking — of thinking that is confined to the sense-plane 
of the mind; and the bird is the symbol of spiritual think- 
ing — of thinking that rises above the sphere of the sense 
life into the clear atmosphere of what is spiritual. 

But at first our thought of spiritual things is connected 
with what is sensuous. This is especially true of young 
people. They are incapable of freeing their thinking from 
sensuous appearances. This is why the mere abstract 
doctrines of the church fail to hold their interest. They 
cannot follow the pure spiritual sense of the Word. And 
yet, if they are young people who have the atmosphere of 
the church in their homes, their thinking is not wholly 
sensuous; it has a spiritual element in it. 

26 



When we insist that young people should be taught the 
letter of the Holy Scripture, we mean that the letter is to 
be taught in a New-Church way; for as a New-Church 
scientist learns the facts, laws and phenomena of nature, 
as the materialist learns them, but learns to think of them 
as outward expressions of the Divine creative life that is 
present in all material forms and expressions of life, so the 
young people of the church, while they learn the facts 
and moral lessons of the letter of the Word, should, at the 
same time, learn to think of them as outward and symbolic 
expressions of a great underlying spiritual sense, which, 
when they grow to it, will unfold in all its beauty before 
their wondering minds. In other words, there is a New- 
Church way of teaching the letter of the Word, just as 
there is a New-Church way of teaching the natural sciences. 

But there comes a time in the course of the mind's 
growth when its thinking is separated from what is natural 
or sensuous. The mental reptile and the mental bird 
separate. Natural thought stays on its own level and finds 
its development on its own plane, and spiritual thought 
rises and flies in the open expanse of heaven. Then we 
can come directly to the doctrines and think spiritually. 

When this state of spiritual thinking comes, the great 
cardinal doctrines of the church can be taught, rationally 
received and confirmed. It is a mistake to attempt to do 
this before the faculty of distinct spiritual thinking has 
been formed. The cardinal doctrines of the church are 
meant by the great whales that were created. 

When the doctrine concerning the Lord, the Word and 
Life are clearly fixed and confirmed in the mind, then 
the external man, the daily life, is imbued with new qual- 
ities. Things really living begin to appear — things that 

27 



have in them a living spiritual soul of good affection and 
thought. 

This is what is meant by these words: "And God 
said, Let the earth bring forth the living soul after its 
kind, the beast and the moving thing, and the wild beast 
of the earth after its kind; and it was so.'' 

Then it is that the regenerating man begins to speak 
from a principle of genuine faith and to confirm in himself 
the good and the true. This prepares the way for the 
Lord to form in him that high and holy human quality 
that He calls "man," 

THE SIXTH DAY OF CREATION 

The making of man, on the sixth day, is God's symbol 
way of telling us how the spiritual man is made and what 
he is when made. The spiritual man is a human quality 
of life, organized in the soul, and exercising its supremacy 
in the daily conduct seen from this Divine view-point, 
anything short of the attainment and exercise of this 
human quality of life is not man. 

The sensuous thought of what constitutes man stops 
with his body. Doubtless this is what most people think of 
when they attempt to form an idea of man. They think 
merely of so much matter molded into the human shape 
and moved and animated by the mysterious force called 
life. It does not enter their minds that man is something 
apart from the human shape. 

In a rude state of society what is called man is a well 
formed physical body, with the additional quality of physi- 
cal prowess. In polite and cultured society, man is con- 
ceived to be a being endowed with charming and graceful 

28 



dignified carriage. In the eyes of the law, one is a man 

when he has attained his majority. But none of these 

measurements has in it the Divine idea of man. None of 

these things is meant in this story by the words, "Let us 
make man." 

Intellectual and spiritual excellence and supremacy are 
what God calls man. This is evident from the use of the 
term "man" in the Holy Scriptures. For instance, we 
read: "I beheld the earth, and lo! there was no man." 
This cannot mean that, in a physical sense, there was no 
man upon the earth. It means that the human shapes 
upon the earth at that time were without those intellect- 
ual, moral and spiritual qualities which constitute the Di- 
vine idea of what it is to be a man. Again we read : ' c Run 
ye to and fro through the streets of Jerusalem,and see now 
and know, and seek in the broad places thereof, if ye can 
find a man; if there be any that executeth judgement, 
that seeketh the truth. " Human shapes are not in them- 
selves men. Jerusalem was thronged with human shapes, 
but man, in the sense of human quality of life, was not to 
be found. 

The story of creation is God's symbol way of telling us 
of the creation of the spiritual man — how, stage after stage, 
He carries forward the great work of regeneration, until 
in the sixth stage, man, the fully regenerated man, comes 
upon the scene. It is a slow process, this making of man. 
Many stages of preparation must be passed through be- 
fore it is possible for God to say: "Let us make man." 
This spiritual man, who results from the combats and 
labors of the regenerative work of the six days, from a 
principle of faith and love, speaks what is true and does 

29 



what is good. He acts from love as well as from faith. 
He is a spiritual man. He is an image of God. 

But this spiritual man whom God makes, through the 
process of regeneration, is male and female; for it is said: 
"Male and female, created He them." Do not let your 
thought drop to the plane of thinking of two individuals, 
for the story of the creation of the male and female is intro- 
duced to show the complete evolution of the two great 
elements constituent of the human mind — its understand- 
ing, with its intellectual faculties, and its will, with all its 
affectional graces and powers. 

The male man is the Divine symbol of the understand- 
ing: the female man of the will and its power of love and 
affection. Man and woman, considered as individuals, are 
the two equal halves of a complete humanity. Neither 
standing alone is complete. It is only in the spiritual 
union of the two that the complete one exists. This is 
effected by marriage, in which each supplies what the 
other lacks. Here then is the symbol. It is the symbol 
of the understanding and the will. As man, as an individ- 
ual, is incomplete, standing alone, so the understanding is 
incomplete, standing alone. It is only half of the mind. 
The man who lives merely in his understanding, becomes 
cold, hard and critical. As woman, as an individual, stand- 
ing alone, is incomplete, so the will is incomplete, standing 
alone. The man who lives merely in his will becomes 
emotional, impulsive and blind in his judgment. 

Marriage — marriage I mean, in the real sense of a spirit- 
ual union, a Divine Sacrament — of twain makes one flesh — 
one man. So marriage — the union of the understanding 
and the will in the individual, makes a spiritual man. 
This spiritual man is thus male and female. He is not all 

30 



intellect, nor is he all emotion. He is both an intellect- 
ual and an emotional man. His understanding is turned 
toward the Lord's truth, and he delights in the sight and 
reception of it; it opens to him the wonders of creation, 
the wonders of the Bible, the wonders of the Incarnation 
and the Divine redemption, and he delights in the clear 
intellectual aspects of these great truths. 

All this is the legitimate field of the masculine side of the 
mind. But he is also female. He has a will, a heart, 
an affectional side to his mind, and it must find a corres- 
ing development. This female element must exist in the 
man that God makes in His image in order that the mind 
may have poise. Both elements are necessary. 

The understanding must be formed to see and ration- 
ally comprehend the truth, and the will must be formed to 
feel and love the truth. Either one, standing alone, is 
fruitless. This is true, even of God Himself. For if God 
were love alone, He could not create anything; if he were 
wisdom alone, He could not create anything. The creative 
life, the creative power, results from the perfect union of 
Divine Love and Divine Wisdom in God. 

A religion that is all feeling runs into wild emotionalism — 
into mere enthusiasm. A religion that is all faith, runs 
into mere intellectualism and spends its time in abstract 
thinking, in mere idealistic speculation. 

No, when God said: "Let us make man in our image 
and after our likeness, " the man that was made and the 
man that is made now, is the new man, born, not of the 
flesh, but of the spirit, with his understanding open to the 
light of heaven, and with his will open to the heat of heaven. 

And marriage — the blending of thought and feeling, under- 

31 



standing and will, is the eternal union in the mind, which 
having its beginning on earth, grows more beautiful to all 
eternity. 

But in the making of this spiritual man, there must be 

a willing and intelligent co-operation on man's part, with 

the Lord. That is why it is said: "And God said, let 

us make man. " This does not mean that God, the Father, 
thus addressed the Son and the Holy Ghost. The real 
truth is that the Lord is addressing the individual. The 
spiritual man is not made by a Divine fiat, nor is he made 
by an arbitrary Divine election or predestination. God 
and man are personally distinct from each other. Man 
is created out of the dead substance of matter, as to his 
body, and out of the substance of the spiritual world 
as to his soul; and then he is endowed with freedom and 
reason. He can co-operate with God. God cannot make 
him into a spiritual man unless he does co-operate with 
Him. He stores up in us, during child life, things good 
and true, the possibilities of spiritual manhood; and when 
we come to the years of responsibility, the Lord says to 
you and to me and to all who hear His voice: "Let us 
make man." God operates; we co-operate. 

Here is the man of the world, absorbed in mere world- 
ly things. He is in the human shape; he has attained to 
some degree of intellectual, moral and civil life; and God 
says to him: "I will operate upon your soul; you co-oper- 
ate by keeping my commandments, and thus let us, I 
operating and you co-operating, make man — the spirit- 
ual man in you, who as he comes into power, will have 
dominion over all lower things, subduing and bringing 
them in to : order." 

32 



THE SABBATH DAY OF CREATION 

The first chapter of Genesis describes, in its spiritual 
sense, the creation of the spiritual man. It tells us of the 
great processes by which, from being merely natural, man 
becomes spiritual. Here is where Genesis begins. Out 
of the merely natural state, in which man loves himself 
and the world, it carries him in his spiritual growth until 
there is implanted in him a genuine spiritual life — affec- 
tions and thoughts, regulated and determined into act by 
a clear understanding of the laws and rules of religious 
life and duty. He then reflects the Divine wisdom and 
becomes an image of God. This process is what is meant 
by the six days of creation. 

During this growth, from one state to another, man's 
regard is for the Divine truth. All that he wills, thinks 
and does is inspired by his understanding and love of the 
truth. 

This is why the name God alone is used in the first 
chapter of Genesis; for by the name God, the operation 
of the Lord as the Divine truth is meant. 

The spiritual man is therefore the product of the Di- 
vine truth. He receives the truth by an outward way 
into his memory. Then he begins to think about it, to 
reason about it; then it is lifted into the light of his 
understanding and he becomes intelligent in the doctrines 
of the church. 

The next step he takes is the act of compelling himself 
to live according to it. He begins to order his life and con- 
versation by the truth which he understands. As he does 
this, the Lord, by the Holy Spirit, flows into him, by an 
interior way, and gifts him with affections for the truth. 

33 



These affections are ultimately united to the truth and 
he becomes a spiritual man. This is the way the Lord 
makes the spiritual man. 

When made, he is the image of God, and differs in every 
particular of his life of motive from the natural man. 

But the spiritual man, while in God's image, is not in 
God's likeness. Thus there lies above the plane of the 
spiritual degree of the internal mind of man a region of 
possible affection and thought, which when it is formed 
and developed, results in a celestial man, a man that is as 
distinct from the spiritual man as the spiritual man is 
from the natural man. 

The celestial man is not made by the truth, although 
every act of his life is in harmony with the truth. He is 
open to the Lord in his heart-life; and while far from being 
wildly emotional, is at the same time moved and impelled 
by the Divine good. 

He is under no necessity to reason about the Divine 
truth, but what he believes, thinks and does are consonant 
with the very highest exercise of spiritual reason. Truth 
falls immediately into the embrace of his love. He sees 
it from within. What faith is to the spiritual man, percep- 
tion is to the celestial man. He is intuitive, and comes by 
an internal way, into the deepest things of the Divine 
wisdom. He is childlike in his trust in the Lord. Yet 
his understanding sees in clearest light the deeper things 
of the church that are hidden from the wise and prudent. 

The law of the Lord is inscribed on the tables of his 
heart of flesh. The Lord is very being to him; he lives 
and moves in the atmosphere of the Divine love. When 
he reads the Lord's Word, he feels the personal atmosphere 
of the Lord in it. His conversation is in heaven. 

34 



Such is the celestial man — such are the celestial people — 
the love-people of the world. 

The celestial man is the Lord's Sabbath. God's truth 
has done its work. He has had his spiritual combats; and 
now love crowns the whole spiritual work with its life and 
touch and fills the soul with its Sabbath calm and peace. 

The Sabbath of the Bible was the seventh day. Think 
of the meaning of the number seven. The word seven is 
used in the Bible as the number of wholeness and per- 
fection. For instance, when it is said in the Bible: "In 
that day seven women shall take hold of one man," the 
thought expressed is that of all the affections of the heart — 
the pure love of the heart, going out to and seeking guid- 
ance by the Lord in His Divine Humanity. In the book 
of Revelation it is said that the Lamb in the midst of the 
throne had seven horns and seven eyes which are the seven 
spirits of God. 

The Lamb is the symbol of the Lord in His Divine Hu- 
manity; and the number seven applied to the horns and 
eyes of the Lamb stands for the perfection and holiness of 
His power and His wisdom. The seven devils cast out of 
Mary of Magdala, denote, not her sinfulness and moral 
degradation, but the fulness of her regeneration. 

So of the seventh day of the creation — it stands for the 
perfect work of regeneration — for the sabbath of the soul. 
The love man is the Lord's sabbath — His rest. He has the 
rest and peace of the Lord in his soul. Repose and heaven- 
ly tranquillity characterize his life. He feels the delights 
of wisdom and enjoys the peace of exalted virtue. 

The Jewish dispensation of religion was merely the re- 
presentative of a church. It was held in connection with 

35 



the Lord and heaven, not through any internal quality of 
life, but by the symbols of its ceremonia 1 s and ritual; and 
in that representative of a church, the seventh day stood 
for two things: (1) The peace which came to the Lord after 
He had fought against and subjugated the infernal powers 
of darkness; and (2) the rest that comes to all who, by 
taking up the cross and following Him in the regeneration, 
attain to the rest and peace of heaven. 

When we understand the difference between the celestial 
man and the spiritual man, instantly there dawns the rea- 
son for the two and conflicting accounts of creation given 
in Genesis. The first account describes the rise of man out 
of the natural into the spiritual state. The second account 
describes the rise of man out of the spiritual into the celes- 
tial state. The spiritual man is made by the truth; and 
because Elohim means God as to the Divine Truth, that 
name is used in the first account. The celestial man is 
made by a double operation, the operation, of love and 
truth; and because Jehovah means God in the operation 
of His Divine Love, therefore it is introduced in the 
second account of creation. Jehovah-Elohim is used to 
designate the fact that the ce'estial man is the love 
man — the likeness of God, and that with him all truth is 
from good. 

The love door of the celestial man is open to the Lord. 
Love is first with him. It flows from the Lord into his 
will; and because his understanding is connected directly 
with his will, love from the heavenly Father, passes immed- 
iately into the understanding where it is intellectualized 
and becomes truth from good. 

Such was the man of the seventh day of creation. There 
are but a few who at this day come into the fullness of the 

36 



perfect life of the seventh day; but it exists for all who do 
faithfully the work of the six days. The New Jerusalem 
means, in the highest thought of it, the coming again 
to men of this beautiful celestial life of the long ago 
golden age. It seems far away, but it will come again. 
Of the seventh day it is not said: "And the evening and 
the morning were the seventh day. " For when the Sab- 
bath of regeneration dawns, the work is done; and one un- 
ending day of spiritual peace and joy reigns in the purified 
soul. 

THE CREATION OF ADAM 

The second chapter of Genesis instead of being, as is 
supposed by rationalizing critics, another account of crea- 
tion, is the description of the Divine process in the carry- 
ing forward of the spiritual creation of man to the higher 
and celestial plane of life. 

The celestial, or love man, different from the spiritual, 
or truth man, is formed and moved by the Divine love. 
It is because of this that the name Jehovah, or Lord, is 
placed in the foreground in the second chapter of Genesis; 
for the name Lord stands for God as to His Divine love. 
But in what sense are we to view the man whose forma- 
tion is so minutely described in this chapter? Is he to be 
conceived of as an individual; or is he to be regarded as 
the type of a community? 

The verbal expressions of the story, as well as the dic- 
tates of sound reason, show that the man of the Genesis 
story is the communal man. 1 his is, of course, away from 
the ordinary interpretation, but there are several circum- 
stances mentioned in the story that clearly indicate this 

37 



as the true conception. For instance, it is said: "The 
Lord God called their name Adam, in the day that the 
Lord God created theni." Also Cain, after he had slain 
Abel, said: "My punishment is greater than I can bear; 
and it shall come to pass that every one finding me will 
slay me." This statement certainly implies the existence 
of society. 

There is another statement in the letter of the story 
which clearly indicates the existence of human society. 
When Cain went into the land of Nod, he is said to have 
known his wife who bore him a son whom they named 
Enoch and for whom a city was built and called after his 
name. If there existed no human society, where did Cain's 
wife come from? Where were workmen procured to build 
a city? Those whose existence, at that time, are inferred 
in the letter of the narrative, had no connection with and 
bore no relation to Adam. 

The fact is, the story is a Divine parable. Adam is a 
race-name. It stands for a community of men and wo- 
men who by the processes of regeneration, described in 
the first chapter of Genesis, were gradually separated, 
spiritually, from the general mass of human beings, and 
who had come into those excellencies of character which 
gifted them with the moral image and likeness of God. 
In other words, by the creation of Adam is meant the 
formation of the first church on this earth — the Most 
Ancient Church. 

Surely there is nothing irrational in this thought. It 
was then, as it was when the Lord came into the world 
and established the Christian Church. It was formed of 
all who accepted Him, and who, by their acknowledgment 

38 



of Him, were separated, in motive and belief, from the out- 
lying mass who rejected Him. 

The name Adam occurs in the second and third chap- 
ters of Genesis a great many times; and in every instance 
it is put with the definite article — "the Adam." This 
shows that the name Adam is not the appellation of an 
individual. It is a nominal expression of kind. The Adam, 
or the man, indicated the community — the society — the 
church; and the idea is that of a human association of 
people possessing the graces and excellencies of genuine 
religion. 

The people who formed this church of the childhood 
of the race, were of a heavenly genius. Their whole be- 
ing was alive with the consciousness of the Divine love. 
They reached up to the highest things; and the life of the 
Lord descending through them, gave a living and human 
quality to the most external things of their lives. This 
coming down of the Divine life into the most external 
plane of their being and gifting it with a human quality 
is what is meant by the Lord forming man of the dust of 
the ground. 

Keep the mind on the spiritual plane of thought, for 
by the dust of the ground is not meant natural dust, but 
natural dust is used to symbolize that which in itself is 
dead and external. Not only the souls of these most 
ancient people, but their minds, yea their very bodies 
shared in the influx and formative power of the life of 
God. The Lord dwelt in their souls, and through their 
souls illuminated their minds, and through their minds 
filled their very material bodies with sensations of joy and 
delight. The very dust of their mental ground was made 
alive — imbued with a human quality. 

39 



How much more worthy of the Divine Creator this con- 
ception is! What a profound interest it creates in the 
Divine Book! 

And the breath of lives breathed into the nostrils of 
Adam — how easy, now that we see that Adam stands for 
a highly developed heavenly society, to see in that breath- 
ing the symbol of how the Divine and heavenly life came 
to the people who constituted this first church! The nos- 
trils, through which odors, good or bad, are sensed, stand 
for the mental faculties of perception. The people of the 
long ago golden age had an internal and living perception 
of what was good and true. The Lord's life of goodness 
and truth came to them as a matter of inward perception. 
It was breathed into their souls; and it came, not as the 
breath of life, but as the breath of lives, for that is what is 
said in the original text. 

Man has a will and an understanding. Today the under- 
standing is separated from the will and made capable of 
an intellectual elevation above the will; but this was not 
the case with the Adamic man. His will and understand- 
ing were united. Good from the Lord flowed, in an inter- 
nal way, into his will and passed immediately into his 
understanding and became there, in an intellectua'ized 
form, the truth to guide him. Good in the will, truth in 
the understanding were God's breath in the most ancient 
man. It was in him the breath of lives — the life of good, 
and the life of truth from that good. 

When we speak of the church formed among these 
people we must think of it as a heavenly state of life in 
them. They had no outward book or revelation. They 
saw what was good and true from perception. They had — 
that is, the more interior among them — open communica- 

40 



tion with heaven; and from heaven they knew the heaven- 
ly correspondence of the objects of nature that surround- 
ed them. Their internal sight made one with their exter- 
nal sight. When they looked upon natural objects, they 
saw what we see, but, different from us, their minds were 
immediately elevated to see the heavenly meaning of nat- 
ural objects. 

Nature to them was what the letter of the Word is to a 
well-instructed New Churchman, a vast symbol of the 
Divine mind. They could ascend from Nature to Nat- 
ure's God. Heaven was then close to the earth and they 
saw it mirrored in all the beautiful forms of natural life. 
Their whole being, soul, mind and body, was open to the 
Divine influxes. They lived and moved in the current 
of the Divine harmonies. And when we read of this 
Most Ancient Church, we are not to think of cathedrals 
and church structures, of priests, rituals or outward sacra- 
ments. All these came when man had fallen away from 
his primeval state. The people of the Golden Age lived 
simple pastoral life. The father in the family was the 
head and the priest, and the church was an innocent, yet 
wise life in the hearts, and revelation was the voice of the 
heavenly Father in their souls. 

THE GARDEN EASTWARD IN EDEN 

The people of the Golden Age, who formed the Most 
Ancient Church, were celestial. They were open in their 
heart life to all the influences that came to them from 
their Heavenly Father. They had no memory of the 
truth apart from their life. Their life was really their 
memory. Their life of love and faith came to them as a 
constant inflowing from above, and as their external mind 

41 



acted in complete harmony with their internal mind, there 
was nothing in them to resist or act against the Divine in- 
flow of life. They were the love-people of long ago. 

The state of love in which they lived — love to the Lord 
and to each other— is meant by Eden. The Eden of the 
Golden Age was therefore not a natural territory or tract 
of land, but a heavenly state of love, with the tranquillity 
and blessedness of soul that belong to and result from it. 
Of course the people who formed this church of the child- 
hood of the race, had a local habitation in the world, and 
that natural place was what we know as the land of Canaan ; 
but Eden was not a natural place, but a state of love. It 
was the kingdom of heaven in men's hearts — the church, 
as to love, in human lives. It was within and not outside. 

There is no difficulty attending this thought of Eden if 
we keep in mind that the Lord in this story is telling us, 
not of the natural life of an individual, but of the spirit- 
ual life of a race. It is the history of the church — of the 
celestial church — that we are reading about in this story; 
of the church, not as an ecclesiastical organization, but as 
a state of love and faith in human hearts. This is the 
key to the right understanding of the subject. The church 
was in the most ancient people, and Eden was the love- 
side of it — the love that filled and animated their will. 
We have seen that in the man of the celestial church, the 
will and understanding were united. The man of that 
church had no memory knowledge — no understanding — no 
faith — no intelligence apart from the great love life of his 
will. He thought as he loved, and his thought life or 
intelligence was the form his love assumed in his under- 
standing. Here we see the spiritual meaning of the garden 
planted eastward in Eden. The garden in Eden was the 

42 



heavenly intelligence that was from and in the heavenly 
state of love denoted by Eden. Eden is one thing and 
the garden is quite another thing. We are told in the church 
writings that the celestial man, because he is in a state of 
supreme love to the Lord — a love that is from the Lord 
and directed to the Lord — comes into a state en rapport 
with the angels and is, as if he were one among them. "In 
this state all his thoughts and ideas of thoughts, and even 
his words and actions are open even from the Lord, and 
contain within them what is celestial and spiritual. "Such 
was the celestial man of the Edenic age. He was open to 
the Lord. His intelligence was from love. He was in 
the true order of his life. His intelligence came from with- 
in. It was the form of his love. This was the garden 
planted in Eden. 

It is true that this intelligence was not of the external 
character that belongs to our idea of intelligence. It was 
not an intelligence formed from knowledge of external 
science; for the people of the Golden Age did not study 
matters of mere science. Their intelligence was the in- 
telligence of love. They understood the deep things of 
the Divine life. 

Remnants of this intelligence may be found today in 
the simple good people of the world. Their hearts are 
right; their love is pure and single; and while they lack 
much, and in many instances all the knowledge of exter- 
nal matters of science and philosophy, so highly prized 
by the man of the world, yet they have an inward in- 
telligence that opens them to see and comprehend the very 
deepest things of the church. They are the babes of the 
kingdom of heaven to whom the Lord reveals the things 
that are hidden from the wise and prudent of the world. 

43 



Such, only in a deeper sense, was the heavenly intelli- 
gence of the people of the Most Ancient Church. Their 
garden was planted in Eden. 

Think of what is meant by the statement that the gar- 
den was planted eastward. 

The east, as a spiritual quarter, stands, in the supreme 
sense, for the Lord. In Ezekiel we read: "He brought 
me to the gate, even the gate that looked the way of the 
east, and behold the glory of the God of Israel came from 
the way of the east.' We are told in the church writ- 
ings that it was because of this correspondence of the east 
to the Lord that there prevailed, in the representative 
Jewish Church, before the building of the temple, the 
holy custom of turning the face to the east when praying. 

But the east not only represented the Lord; it also re- 
presented the reception of intelligence from Him. Here 
lies its meaning. The minds of the Adamic people were 
turned toward the Lord. He was in their love; 
and their love of Him formed and turned their 
thoughts toward Him. This is the true origin of orienta- 
tion. Largely the internal has been lost and only the 
physical act remains; but among the people of the celestial 
church there was a real turning of their minds to the Lord 
and a real reception of intelligence from Him. He was 
the east they turned to; and light from Him was the intell- 
igence that made their beautiful garden. 

But this was not all. There were beautiful fruit-bear- 
ing spiritual trees in the garden. "And out of the ground 
made the Lord God to grow every tree desirable to beho 1 d 
and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the 
garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.' 1 

44 



The garden eastward in Eden being the heavenly in- 
telligence of the man of the celestial church, the trees of 
the garden are the perceptions from that intelligence — per- 
ceptions of truth and good. Every tree desirable to be- 
hold! Don't we see that they were the perceptions of 
truth? The eye of the mind is the faculty of understand- 
ing — the intellectual seeing of the truth. 

We must not think of these most ancient people as 
being without intellectual guidance. They possessed the 
very highest form of intelligence; and from it, in an inter- 
nal way, saw the very deepest truths. But truth with 
them was not a spiritual plaything. It was a vital thing 
of life. They beheld it as a desirable tree to look upon 
because it was from good and led to good. "A tree good 
for food!" How easy to see that it was the perception of 
good! 

Truth and goodness, as matters of perception, formed 
the very life of these people. They did not reason about 
truth; they perceived it. They did not reason about good; 
they perceive it. Open to the Lord and the heavenly in- 
fluxes, they spiritually sensed what was true and good as 
we sense naturally the odo. s of flowers. They had no 
system of doctrine — all things came to them from within. 

And the tree of life in the midst of the garden, was 
the highest of all their perceptions, the perception of the 
Lord as very Being, their very inmost life. They ate of 
the fruit of this tree — lived from the Lord's life — had a 
sensation of His life in the midst of all their intelligence. 
For this tree was in the midst of the garden. The Lord's 
life which is His love, they made central in all their willing, 
thinking and doing. This was the tree of life. 

45 



But while all this is true, yet in order that man may 
have freedom, he must be in the appearance that life is in 
him. He must never confirm that appearance as if it were 
true; but he must be held in it. This is what is meant by 
the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. It was there 
in the garden, but to turn to it and seek to enter into 
heavenly things from self would result in spiritual death. 
Thus it was said: "In the day thou eatest thereof, thou 
shalt surely die.' , 

THE RIVER OF EDEN PARTED INTO FOUR 

HEADS 

The people of the Adamic age had an intuitive percep- 
tion of the Divine symbolism of nature. The lands and 
rivers of the earth were to them representative of the inter- 
nal things of heaven and the church. They saw from with- 
in that the world of nature was a theatre representative of 
the world of mind and that there was a living and vital 
relation of correspondence between the two worlds. Rem- 
nants of the knowledge of this correspondence of natural 
things to spiritual are found among us today. Christian 
people speak of Zion, Jerusalem, Canaan and Jordan with 
spiritual ideas attached to each name. In using these 
names they do not think of natural cities, lands or rivers, 
but of what they spiritually stand for. 

With the Adamic people correspondence — the relation 
of natural objects to spiritual realities — was a universal 
language. Here we have the key to the meaning of all 
the natural objects mentioned in connection with the 
Edenic story and people. As Eden was not a natural 
place, but a highly developed state of heavenly love; as 
the garden eastward in Eden was not a highly cultivated 

46 



piece of ground, but a beautifully cultivated state of 
heavenly intelligence, so the river of Eden that parted 
into four heads was not a natural river, but the Divine 
wisdom of the Lord, which flowed into the mind, perform- 
ing for it a service fitly represented by the service which 
a river renders to the natural country through which it 
courses its way. 

The thought of a natural river was, in the minds of 
the most ancient people, instantly changed into the thought 
of the inflowing Divine wisdom, and the variety of forms 
the Divine wisdom takes on as it flows into finite minds, 
they regarded as its streams, and gave corresponding or 
symbolic names to them. This very thing has been pre- 
served in the ancient mythologies. The consecration of 
the fountains of Pindus, Helicon and Parnassus to the 
Muses and other references, in mythology, to rivers, their 
sources and results, had their rise from a perception of 
the correspondence of a river to the Divine wisdom. 

In our holy volume of Divine Scripture, this symbolism 
is clearly set forth. Those who find deep satisfaction in 
receiving instruction in the truths of Divine wisdom are 
said "to drink of the river of God's pleasures.'* Ezekiel's 
vision of the stream that issued from under the altar of 
the Lord's house and which widened and deepened as it 
flowed on, until it became a river that no man could pass — 
what was it other than the Divine wisdom received by 
man and heightening as he learns to love and obey it, 
until it attains to what no mere finite mind can compre- 
hend? 

St. John's vision of the river of life proceeding from 
the throne of God and of the Lamb — was it not a sym- 
bolic representation of the Divine wisdom as the Word 

47 



going forth from the Lord to men? The Psalmist says: 
" There is a river the streams whereof shall make glad 
the city of God." What is this river? Truly, it is the 
Lord's Word, which is His wisdom. And the streams of 
that river — what are they? Truly, they are the particu- 
lar truths — truths informing the will, enlightening the 
understanding and enriching the life, that go forth from 
the Divine wisdom in the Word as streams from a river. 

Now, in all these instances none of us has been think- 
ing of a natural river. We have been thinking of the 
Lord's Word, which is the source of all wisdom to angels 
and to men. Why, then, should anyone think naturally 
of the river in Eden? 

The river in Eden is mentioned as the symbo 1 of the 
Divine wisdom of God. There was a tree of life in Eden, 
and it was the perception of the Lord as the very life of 
the will — the Divine love itself, from which the will's 
affections existed. But the Lord was not only, as to 
His love, the life of the affections which belonged to the 
Adamic people, but He was also the life of the thoughts 
that belonged to their understanding. God's wisdom as 
the very life of their thinking, was the river of life to 
them, as God's love as the very life of their willing was the 
tree of life to them. 

Have you noticed the fact that no name is given to 
this river? Why is it a river without a name? Its bran- 
ches are named, but the river itself bears no name. Why 
is this so? It is so because the Divine wisdom, as it is 
in God, cannot be expressed to finite ; hought. There is no 
finite term by which it can be defined. For this reason 
the river is not named. But when the river entered Eden 
it was parted and " became nto four heads." 

48 



ex 



The nameless river entering Eden symbolizes the in- 
expressible Divine wisdom finiting itself — adapting itself 
to human reception and thus presenting itself to the va- 
rious faculties of the mind and there finding what dis- 
tinguishes it in the human quality of loving and think- 
ing. 

It is not difficult to see this, for every one can see that 
the Divine wisdom of God cannot fall into finite vessels, 
and that in order to be understood by the finite mind 
must, in some sense and degree, enter the faculties of the 
mind. 

Here we come to the distinct degrees of the mind — to 
that sublime psychology which is a part of the Lord's 
revelation to the church. For we are taught to think of 
the mind as a definite spiritual organism comprising dis- 
tinct degrees or planes of mental life. 

In general, the mind is formed of three degrees, which 
we designate as celestial, spiritual and natural, but there 
is really a fourth degree. It is the rational, which exists 
between the spiritual and the natural. As the Divine 
wisdom flows out of God to man, it is thus parted, like the 
river in Eden, into four heads. It enters these four de- 
grees of the mind, and wisdom formed in these four de- 
grees is apprehensible by man. The heads of the river 
can be named. Parted into four heads, the streams of 
the Edenic river were called Pison, Gihon, Hiddekel and 
Euphrates. Each of these names stands for a distinct 
form and activity of the Divine wisdom as received into 
the finite mind. 

As a Hebrew word, Pison means literally a change or 
extension, but spiritually the name stands for the opera- 

49 



tion of the Divine wisdom upon the human will. 
As this operation goes on the will undergoes continual 
changes in its quality — constant improvement by being 
lifted up. And as this is done, the Divine wisdom di- 
rects its affections in the performance of wide and ex- 
tensive uses. This is Pison — change and extension. 

Gihon, as a Hebrew name, means a stream or a valley 
of grace. Spiritually, this stream of the river of Eden 
means the understanding's perception, through the truth, 
of all heavenly graces. Wisdom from God is the only 
thing that enables the understanding to distinguish be- 
tween the graces of heaven and the moralities and virtues 
of a well-ordered natural life. The grace of heavenly 
life is a quality that belongs to a purified understanding 
— an understanding that sees how to classify the virtues 
of life, distinguishing those that are merely moral and 
civil from those that are the result of the inflowing wis- 
dom of God. This is Gihon — Valley of Grace. 

Hiddekel means a sharp voice. Here we have the Divine 
wisdom pictured to us as the influence which illuminates 
the rational faculty — the inflowing reason as the sharp 
voice that guides, by instruction, the rational degree of 
the mind. In the Eden story Hiddekel flowed toward 
the east of Assyria. Assyria is the great Bible symbol 
of the rational mind. The word itself means beholding. 
The rational is the seeing faculty of the mind. The ration- 
al faculty receiving the stream of Divine wisdom by which 
like a voice speaking from within, it is led to look up to 
God and revelation in all its processes, is Hiddekel. 

Euphrates, the fourth stream from the river, means liter- 
ally to make fruitful. The natural mind, the whole plane 

SO 



of natural life, when it receives the guidance of Divine 
wisdom, is made fruitful in good works as the true and 
ultimate expression of the heavenly life. Thus the Lord's 
wisdom flowing into the natural mind and rendering it 
prolific in works of genuine charity is Euphrates. 

Such is the spiritual meaning of the river in Eden part- 
ed into four heads. It is the symbol way of telling us of 
the influence of the Divine wisdom upon every depart- 
ment of the life of the Adamic people. There was a 
stream for the will (the celestial); there was a stream for 
the understanding, (the spiritual); there was a stream 
for what lies between the spiritual and the natural, (the 
rational,) and there was a stream for the natural mind 
and life. The whole mind and life were reached and 
affected by the wisdom of the Lord which thus adapted 
itself to every plane of their being. 

THE SLEEP OF ADAM: THE CREATION OF EVE 

When there dawns upon the mind the true spiritual 
character of these early chapters of the book of Genesis, 
one feels less and less inclined to call attention to the dif- 
ficulties standing in the way of one who attempts to in- 
vent theories of a merely literal interpretation. God's 
purpose, in the very structure of these early records, is 
so apparent that the mere calling of attention to their 
literal contradictions seems almost sacrilegious; and for that 
reason we have not dwelt at all with that phase of the sub- 
ject but have held the mind on the high plane of their 
spiritual meaning. It is not a destructive, but a construct- 
ive work the church has been called to do. We need there- 
fore, to come directly to the Lord's own opening of the 

51 



internal sense of the story of Adam's sleep and the creation 
of Eve. 

The Adamic Church gradually rose to the very fullest 
enjoyment of all the love and intelligence that belong to 
the highest state of regeneration. The deepest heavenly 
love filled the heart of the church. That love was Eden. 
The highest heavenly intelligence illuminated the mind 
of the church. That intelligence was the beautiful gar- 
den planted eastward in Eden. The deep perceptive fac- 
ulty this Most Ancient Church was endowed with, en- 
abled it to receive instruction from the Lord in an inter- 
nal way. The voice of the Lord was heard in the garden, 
that is, the guidance of the church was not effected by 
following an outward rule of life, but by an inward listen- 
ing to the Lord's voice as it uttered its message in their 
souls. 

It was a beautiful life, too beautiful, indeed, for us, 
to whom the Lord must come in such a different way, 
to form any adequate idea of it. The man — the Adam, 
dwelt alone in the garden. How significant this is when 
once we learn what is meant in the Bible by living alone! 

Think. Those who look to the Heavenly Father and 
trust in all things to His guidance, are, in the Bible, said 
to be alone. External things of mere doctrinal knowl- 
edge — things that make one conscious o c one's individu- 
ality — are not in the affections and thoughts of such highly 
developed people. They live alone with the Lord. Ba- 
laam, in speaking of the future of Israel as the Lord's 
people said: "Lo the people shall dwell alone." Moses, 
on one occasion, in speaking of Israel said: " Israel shall 
dwell in safety alone." A prophet of the olden time, ex- 
horted Israel, saying: "Arise, get you up to the wealthy 

52 



nation, that dwelleth without care, saith the Lord, which 
have neither gates nor bars, which dwell alone. " Of course, 
we all see that by dwelling alone was not meant individual 
solitude. So of Adam. As Adam is the name of the church 
of the childhood of the race, his being alone means that 
the celestial church lived alone with the Lord. That it 
was led and influenced solely by the Divine guidance 
from within. 

We have no means of determining how long this single 
leadership of the Lord — this dwelling alone with Him — 
lasted. A very considerable length of time must have 
elapsed before the Adamic people began to turn to self 
and thus away from the Lord; but there ultimately came 
a posterity of the Most Ancient Church that inclined to 
their proprium or ownhood — that entertained the thought 
of and desire to possess the consciousness of an individu- 
ality apart from the Lord. 

This thought — this desire, grew from generation to 
generation, until finally the ownhood, the personal individu- 
ality, had such prominence given to it that the sole lead- 
ing of the Lord was no longer possible. This state, when 
it was formed, is what is meant by the words: "And the 
Lord God said, it is not good that the man should be 
alone.' ' 

This does not mean that in the original creation the 
Lord had failed to supply all the needs of man and that 
upon the discovery of man's need for human companion- 
ship He set to work to remedy the defect. It means that 
a state had arisen in the Adamic Church in which the 
church no longer felt that it was good to live alone with 
the Lord. 

53 



The Lord respects, in all the dispensations of His pro- 
vidence the freedom of man. So when the Adamic Church 
no longer desired to be led solely by the Lord, He did 
not interfere with the church's freedom. It would not 
have been for the good of the church if the Lord had 
compelled it to live alone with Him. 

But while the Lord permitted the Adamic people to 
descend into this more external state, He did not turn 
away from them. He followed these most ancient people 
in their decline and raised up the means of regenerating 
them on the plane to which they had fallen. Hence we 
read that the Lord said: "I will make an help meet for 
him." Here we come to the story of Adam's deep sleep. 
Don't think of a man going to sleep physically. The 
sleep described here was a spiritual sleep. St. Paul ex- 
horts spiritual sleepers where he says: " Awake, thou that 
sleepest, and Christ shall give thee light." 

The mind is not simply a thinking faculty; it is a spirit- 
ual organism, created in discrete planes of consciousness. 
This was true of the people called Adam. Now, when the 
Most Ancient Church ceased to desire to be alone with the 
Lord, the very highest plane of life in that Adam fell 
into a state of spiritual sleep. The Lord's love was no 
longer active on that plane. Deep sleep brooded over 
it. This was Adam's sleep. Falling into this sleep, the 
Adamic people would have utterly destroyed all heavenly 
life in themselves if it had not been for the tender mercy 
of the Lord. They inclined to their selfhood, and it would 
have swallowed them up. Think of the Lord's mercy! 
Adam sleeps; the highest life of the church has ceased; 
but while Adam sleeps, the Lord takes one of his ribs 
and closes up the flesh instead, and that rib, He builds 

54 



into a woman. So runs the allegory. What does it mean? 
Remember, it is the religious condition of the Most Ancient 
Church that is treated of in this story of the rib built 
into a woman — remember that, and the whole narrative 
becomes clear. 

The rib of Adam stands for the ownhood — the individ- 
uality, of the earliest people. This ownhood, in itself, 
was dead — without any spiritual life; but it was capable 
of being vivified with life from the Lord. Thus taken out 
of the most ancient man, as the means of arresting his 
spiritual ruin, and raised into a new condition and animat- 
ed by another life, it could come to see that what is good 
and true are to be believed and practiced in daily life, 
by man as of himself, yet with the acknowledgment that 
the will, the understanding and the power to do so are from 
the Lord alone. 

When the ownhood is thus vivified, it is no longer a 
hard bone — no longer a rib. It becomes soft, pliable, 
fair, yielding and lovable. These qualities are meant by 
the woman, beautiful and innocent. 

This is not, therefore, the story of the origin of wo- 
man; but the woman is introduced into the story because, 
in all the tenderness and beautiful qualities of high and 
noble womanhood, she represents what was true of the 
ownhood of the most ancient people after it was taken out 
of them and raised to newness of life by the Lord. They 
could love this proprium, and the Lord could still retain 
His hold on them. It was, of course, a more external state 
than the one pictured by Adam alone in the garden; but 
it was not an evil state. In coming into it, this posterity 
of the Adamic Church, forsook many internal things. This 
is what is meant by the forsaking of father and mother. 

55 



But the church could cleave to the wife — to the pure and 
the good, as it saw them, on a more external plane. 

To teach us that while what we have described was a more 
outward state of the Most Ancient Church, yet not an 
utterly fallen and evil state, it is said: "And they were 
both naked and were not ashamed. " There was no guilt 
up to this point. It was only the beginning of the fall 
that went on until the Lord came. 



THE SERPENT OF EDEN 

The primeval state of man — of man before he became 
the subject of regeneration — is described in allegorical 
terms, as the earth, without form, and void, with dark- 
ness brooding over the face of a great deep. The six 
days of creation symbolically set forth his gradual rise, 
through the work of regeneration, out of this low condi- 
tion into one of the highest degree of spiritual and celes- 
tial excellence. His fall was a gradual return to his form- 
er natural state ; but when he returned to the ground from 
whence he was taken, he was no longer innocent in his nat- 
uralism; for now he had become evil. As there were 
steps that led up to the high state man reached in his Eden 
home, so there were steps that led down to the moral deg- 
radation that ultimately expelled him from Eden. 

We must think of these most ancient people as involv- 
ing in their spiritual, mental and physical structures the 
same constituents of humanity that we possess; but in 
them, all the elements of their being were in harmony. 
They, when fully regenerated, were open, from their inmost 
soul down through all their mental degrees of life — yea 
even to the most external planes of their bodies — to the 

56 



descending life of the Lord. Everything was in perfect 
order. 

The first movement downward came when a certain 
posterity of the Most Ancient Church felt an inclination 
to exalt and make prominent their individuality. In the 
beginning this was a mere suggestion, but it grew with 
succeeding posterities of that church until they felt it 
was no longer good to live alone with the Lord. 

This led to Adam's deep sleep — the closure of the higher 
planes of the mind to the inflow of the Lord's life. It 
is not that the most ancient people did not possess a 
proprium, in the beginning; for without a proprium — an 
ownhood — they would not have had personal otherness 
from the Lord, and would thus have been incapable of 
regeneration. They always possessed an ownhood; but 
it was not made prominent, nor did they incline to it un- 
til a posterity came that wished to be led as of themselves. 

This, in the beginning, was not an evil thing; for, at 
first, it did not take them away from the Lord, but only 
gave them a consciousness of individuality in following 
Him. The "rib" — the ownhood — was taken out of man 
and built into a woman imbued with innocence and thus 
rendered capable of serving man in his regeneration. But 
this state was much lower than the one described by Adam 
living alone in the garden; and it ultimately led to the 
utter ruin of the Most Ancient Church. 

Up to this point, the sensuous nature in the most an- 
cient people, yielded willing obedience to the dictates and 
impulses of the celestial principles of the mind. Like an 
obedient servant, the sensuous plane of their minds minis- 
tered to the attainment of the highest life. It kept its 

57 



subordinate position. The whole plane of sense life was 
designed by the all-wise Creator to serve the higher life 
of the soul. The senses are inlets for certain kinds of 
knowledge — doors through which the outer things of the 
world enter the mind; and while they are kept subordi- 
nate to the higherprinciples of the soul, they serve the 
use of elevating and enlarging the mind; but when they 
are turned to and exalted above the intellectual and spirit- 
ual things of life, they close the mind to heaven and 
open it downward to the world and thus invert all true 
order. 

This sensuous plane of life — the degree of life that be- 
longs to the senses of the body — is what is meant by the 
serpent in the Eden story. It is said in this story: "Now 
the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field. " 
The animals to which Adam gave names stand for the affec- 
tions and thoughts of the most ancient people; and by 
Adam naming the animals is meant that the man of the 
celestial church perceived the quality of all such affections 
and thoughts. And now, when it is said that the serpent 
was more subtle than any beast of the field, the thing 
meant is that the senses are more deceptive than any other 
quality of human life. They are the lowest and the least 
to be depended upon. They call for constant watchful- 
ness on the part of the higher powers of the mind; they 
need constant direction and guidance. They belong to 
the outer extremes of human life and are open directly 
to receive impressions from the world, by which the mem- 
ory is furnished with things which it can use with persua- 
sive art in favor of the delights and cupidities of mere 
bodily life. The natural mind is formed by deposits from 
the world through the senses of the body: and the nat- 

58 



ural mind thus formed reasons from the sense plane, and 
thus rejects the truth of revelation, and doubts all Divine 
things. The senses cannot be trusted. The judgments 
and conclusions formed from them are always erroneous. 
Every wise man is called upon, in reaching the truth, to 
correct the impressions received from without through his 
senses. They cannot be followed. With the people of the most 
Ancient Church, this sensuous plane, while they remained 
in their integrity, was as wise as a serpent, because it ad- 
mitted into itself the correcting light of the higher princi- 
ples of the mind; but as succeeding posterities of that 
church began to incline to the sense life, to look to the 
senses for their interpretation of life, they came more and 
more under the influence of the sensuous side of their 
being, until all the inner avenues of life were closed. 

To whom did the serpent make its appeal? To Eve. 
Eve is the symbol of the selfhood. The selfhood imbued 
with innocence, was at first a help-meet; but now it had 
grown so large in the regard of these most ancient people 
that it became a means by which the senses were able 
to involve them in complete spiritual ruin. 

The tree of the knowledge of good and of evil was not 
a literal tree, for we can all see that the knowledge of good 
and evil could not have been the product of a tree. The 
knowledge of spiritual things is communicated to man by 
the Lord. It comes by revelation, given either through 
an internal dictate or by a written word of Scripture. 
Every man who does any serious thinking knows this to 
be true. He feels himself incompetent for such a discovery 
as the knowledge of spiritual things. 

With the most ancient people this knowledge flowed 
in from the Lord and they were forbidden to attempt to 

59 



gain it by any external methods. Of all the trees of the 
garden they might eat, excepting the fruit of the tree of 
knowledge. Why this prohibition? The fruit of every 
perception of goodness and truth, they were permitted 
to appropriate; but they must not appropriate to them- 
selves the knowledge that belongs to God alone; for to 
eat of this tree meant a mental appropriation by which 
they would be led to believe that spiritual knowledge 
was the result of their own self-derived intelligence. But 
the Eve in this posterity of the Most Ancient Church — the 
ownhood — had opened the way for the pleading of the sense 
life. Knowledge, as a tree to see was planted by the 
Lord in Eden; for it is lawful to see the tree of knowledge 
— to seek to learn and comprehend the things of know- 
ledge; but it never is lawful to eat of the tree of knowledge 
because that act stands for making knowledge a result of 
our own efforts. It meant intellectual conceit. "Ye 
shall be as gods," the serpent said. This posterity of 
the Most Ancient Church yielded to the deception of the 
sense life. Men began to think of themselves as wise from 
themselves — to be as gods. The senses won out. " Eve 
ate and gave to her husband, and he did eat." The 
selfhood, the will, yielded to the senses; and as a result, 
the intellectual faculty consented. Innocence was lost. 
The soul was closed to God. The sense of guilt came. 
Conscience took the place of perception. They knew they 
were naked. Eden closed to them, and they were "sent 
forth to till the ground from whence they were taken. 

THE CURSE UPON THE SERPENT, THE WOMAN 

AND THE GROUND 

Eating of the tree of knowledge is assigned, in the 

60 



Genesis story, as the reason for the expulsion from Eden; 
and when we see that Eden was the state of heavenly 
love, which had been gradually formed in the hearts of 
the Adamic people, and the garden in Eden the heaven- 
ly intelligence of their minds, and the tree of knowledge 
the appearance that life was their own, and that eating 
of that tree meant that they confirmed and appropriated 
the appearance as a truth, and thus came to regard knowl- 
edge of spiritual things as self derived, we can see that 
nothing less than the loss of their heavenly love and in- 
telligence could result. 

The question has been asked: "If the serpent rep- 
resented man's sensual nature, which finally led him a- 
stray, why did the Lord put such a snare in man's way?" 
In answering this question, we must lay aside the current 
ideas clustering around the term "sensual;" for as used 
in the writings of the New Church, it does not stand for 
the lusts and appetites of the fallen mind, but for that 
plane of the mind whLh sees and concludes through the 
senses of the body. It means the sensuous degree of 
man's mind. This sensuous degree of the mind is the 
sense plane of life — the sense-consciousness — that which 
makes us conscious of the external world and its life. 
It is plainly to be seen that the Lord could not have creat- 
ed man without this plane of life. He would not be man 
if it were left out of his constitution. 

With the primeval Adamic man, this plane was in per- 
fect order. It was upright. It looked to the higher ele- 
ment of spiritual reason for guidance. It was an obed- 
ient servant. 

The posterity of the Adamic people who lost their 
heavenly Eden, inclined to this sensuous principle. They 

61 



paid an undue regard to that, which on its own plane, 
was designed to minister to higher things. They came 
to prefer the things of mere bodily life to the things 
of the soul. This led them to eat of the tree of 
knowledge. 

They then came to believe in their own goodness and 
wisdom; they became wise in their own conceit; they 
attempted to enter into Divine and heavenly things 
through a cultivation of their sense-life. Thus that which 
was a necessary endowment became, because of an abuse, 
the source of the greatest evils. 

This could not have been prevented without violation 
to that freedom of will in which the Lord holds His child- 
ren. Where the will is not free there can be no moral 
responsibility. 

The dreadful crime committed by this posterity of the 
Most Ancient Church — the exaltation of their own good 
above God — the turning of their minds downward to the 
senses and the consequent loss of all the heavenly excel- 
lencies that had crowned and beautified the lives of their 
forefathers, is visited with fearful curses. How are we to 
understand this? The idea generally prevails that God 
became angry at man when he transgressed His law, and 
that He visited these evils upon man because of His anger. 
This cannot be true. Anger has no place in the Divine 
mind. It is as utterly foreign to God's nature as sin it- 
self. There may be here the appearance of anger, but it 
is only an appearance. It cannot be a reality. Anger 
when attributed to the Lord, expresses the aspect under 
which He appears to the perverted mind of man. 

The wicked man thinks God must be angry when His 

62 



laws are broken, because he forms his ideas of God from 
his own state. He believes God does what he knows he 
would do if he were in God's place. Here is a principle 
by which to explain all that is said in the letter of the 
Bible about the anger of God. But the serpent was curs- 
ed: the woman's sorrow was to be multiplied, and the 
ground, cursed of God, was to bring forth thorns and 
thistles. What do these things mean? 

The serpent of this story is, as we have seen, the sensu- 
ous side of the mind. This mental serpent, which in the 
beginning, was upright, led the self-hood of the Adamic 
people astray and involved them in dreadful evils. It 
thus turned away from its subordinate position; and then 
sank to the lowest depths. It, the sensuous plane of the 
mind, reached a deeper degradation than any other fallen 
principle in the Adamic people. The curse, which is said 
to have consigned it to drag its slimy length upon the 
ground, was simply the utterance of the Divine truth as 
to the state of the sensuous mind after it averted itself 
from the Divine order in which it was formed. 

This side of man's mind, which in the beginning look- 
ed up to higher principles, now crawled close to the earth 
and was fed by merely earthly and corporeal things. The 
higher degrees of man's life were closed and men began to 
live a sensuous life believing only the things that report- 
ed to their minds through the outer doorways of their 
bodily senses. They became sensuous men — a genera- 
tion of serpents — mere naturalists, to whom God and spirit- 
ual things were mere sounds. Ah yes, this curse upon the 
serpent is seen even in our own day in men and women 
who are seeking the satisfactions of life in the gratification 
of bodily appetite, in mere pleasure and natural diversion. 

63 



The enmity between the serpent and the woman and 
her seed — what is it? It was the separation that was 
then effected between the sensuous life and the heaven- 
ly selfhood. These two planes became antagonistic. 
There originated then an antagonism which has persist- 
ed in all the succeeding generations of men. We all know 
what it is. St. Paul graphically describes it: "The flesh 
lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh, 
and these are contrary one to the other." It has been 
the conflict of the ages, and will continue, until the mys- 
tery of sin is ended in the final triumph of redemption. 

And the curse upon the woman, what was it? Cer- 
tainly it was no Divine infliction. The woman of the 
Edenic story was the symbol of the selfhood, which the 
Lord mercifully granted to the Adamic people when they 
could no longer live alone with Him, and into which He 
inspired what was lovely and pure. But this selfhood, 
yielding to the senses, fell. Its entire character was chang- 
ed. Thereafter it would be hard to bring into the con- 
duct the states of heavenly life. It would be difficult to 
even conceive of spiritual things, and great spiritual sor- 
row and temptation would be experienced in bringing the 
high truths of heaven into the daily life. Is it not so? 
How difficult it is to lead men to see that there is a spirit- 
ual world! How hard it is for them to believe in the 
supersensuous life! This is all the result of man's fall. 

And the curse upon the ground: "Thorns and thistles 
shall it bring forth." The ground referred to is the ex- 
ternal natural life. Out of this ground, the Lord, in the 
beginning, formed man; now he returns to the ground 
from whence he was taken; but it brings forth evils which 
are spiritual thorns and false principles of life, which are 

64 



spiritual thistles. These things became man's hereditary 
nature; they grew up spontaneously. And the curse upon 
the man! He was to eat bread in the sweat of his face. 
No longer would good come directly from the Lord 
by a gentle inflowing into the will. The order of influx 
was changed. Only through spiritual toil could heavenly 
life — the good of heaven — be procured. It has been so 
ever since. Man came under a different law, the law 
expressed by St. Paul where he says: "Work out your 
soul's salvation with fear and trembling." Only in this 
way can we expect to procure and eat of the bread of 
life. 

THE EXPULSION FROM EDEN 

What a wonderful parable this story of the first pair is! 
We have seen them in their beautiful garden home — happy, 
because innocent. We have traced their decline, step by 
step, to their final act of disobedience. Now we see them 
driven from their beautiful garden to till the ground from 
whence they were taken. It is all a wonderfull Divine 
parable. 

We have grown familiar with the thought that Adam is 
the name of that portion of the then existing human race 
which by process of spiritual and celestial unfoldings, was 
formed into the first church established upon the earth ; and 
we have learned to think of Eden as the name given to 
the beautiful love-life they lived, and of the garden, east- 
ward in Eden, as the name given to designate the heav- 
enly intelligence they possessed ; for like a luxuriant gar- 
den, their minds, always open to the Lord, brought forth 
every form and order of celestial intelligence. 

In this love-state, with all the beautiful forms of intelli- 

65 



gence which clothed it, the Adamic people lived for many 
generations. Then the love of leading themselves be- 
gan to take root and grow in their hearts. That love the 
Lord modified by imbuing it with the affection of looking 
to and acknowledging Him in the life of acting as of them- 
selves; and when he showed this marvelous love for them, 
He called it taking a rib out of Adam and building it into 
a woman. This mercy of the Lord arrested, for a while, 
the fall of this church, but the decline once entered upon, 
went on until by turning to their senses for the interpreta- 
tion of life, the members of this church of the race's infancy, 
fell entirely away from their heavenly Fathers guidance 
and lost their love for Him and their intelligence of heavenly 
things, and were expelled from Eden. 

The steps in this moral decline were slowly taken, and 
many generations came and passed away before these 
early people came to believe that they had life and intelli- 
gence from themselves. The story of the talking serpent 
is introduced into the parable to symbolize the sensuous 
life of these most ancient people. This sense plane, good 
when subordinated to the higher principles of the mind, 
they exalted to a degree of dominance and began to listen 
to its pleadings. This led them into evil. 

The serpent has ever been regarded as the symbol of 
sensuous thought and life. In Phoenecian mythology we 
have the story of an egg surrounded by a serpent. It was 
the Phoenician way of expressing the fact that life, in its 
very beginning, is beset with danger from sensuous thoughts 
and affections. The hair of Medusa was transformed into 
serpents after she had violated the sanctity of the temple 
of Minerva. This myth expressed the law that the ulti- 
mate things of life become merely sensual in those who 

66 



violate the holy things of their soul life. Hercules, strang- 
ling great serpents, while as yet he was an infant in his 
cradle, and afterward destroying the hydra, is a mytho- 
logical picture of how innocence destroys every approach 
of sensuality, and how through the labors of regeneration 
every form of evil is overcome. 

The serpent of the Edenic story represents the same 
things. Listening to its subtle pleading on the part of 
Eve was the selfhood inclining to the mere sense plane and 
finally yielding to its seductive influence. This could not 
have been prevented without taking from the most ancient 
people that freedom of will which enabled them to live a 
responsbile human life. In this way the final fall came 
about. 

The appearance that they lived of themselves, that 
life was their own, the Adamic people confirmed as a 
truth. Little by little did they bring into their thinking 
the importance of their individuality; little by little they 
receded from the inward guidance of the Lord until finally 
senuous reasoning seduced them into believing that outward 
and visible things were more real than inward and invis- 
ible things; that it was folly to believe that life came to 
them from God when it was evident to their senses that 
it orginated in them; that it was foolish to look up to the 
guidance of an invisible being when their sense-conscious- 
ness clearly revealed to them the fact that they guided 
themselves. So it was these appearances, which they 
exalted into the region of truth, and adopted, that led 
them ultimately to believe that they were good and wise 
of themselves — gods knowing good and evil. 

What could result from this dreadful state but their 
expulsion from Eden? This expulsion, however, was not 

67 



an arbitrary act on the part of the Lord. It was the 
result of their closure to the inflow of the Lord's life. 

The story of the Lord driving the first pair out of Eden 
is only the parable way of describing the way things appear- 
ed to the fallen people of the Most Ancient Church. The 
people of whom this parable treats had effaced those 
heavenly graces which were once the glory of their lives. 
They could no longer respond to the Divine love. They 
had closed, plane after plane, their minds to the heavenly 
influxes, and their expulsion from Eden was their own act. 

We all know that as evil loves grow in man's heart 
they expel him from any real delight in the society of 
innocent and pure-minded people. He does not love what 
they love. He seeks his own. So it was in the long ago. 
By closing their hearts to heaven the fallen people of the 
Adamic age withdrew from the sacred influences of good- 
ness and separated themselves from heaven as a bad man 
expels himself from the society of the virtuous and truth- 
loving. 

But a great mercy was shown them. We are told of 
it in the story of the cherubim with the sword of flame 
stationed at the east of the garden to guard the way of 
the tree of life. Don't think of a literal cherub, nor of 
a literal sword of flame, but instead think of the mercy and 
providence of the Lord over those most ancient people — the 
Lord's watchful care lest they from mere sensuous reason- 
ing, should seek to enter into holy things and profane them, 
and by so doing bring the deeper curse upon themselves. 

The great miracle of the separation of the understand- 
ing from the will had not as yet been wrought, so their 
wills must be guarded lest in them there might occur the 

68 



mixture of good and evil. Such a mixture is profanation; 
and that sin is incurable because it closes the very capacity 
for the reception of God. The gate of their wills must 
be guarded; and the loving providence of the Lord in thus 
protecting them against this sin of profanation is what is 
meant by the cherub at the east of Eden. The 
cherub stood there to guard the way of the tree of life, 
"lest they put forth their hand and eat of the tree of life 
and live forever.' 1 

How remarkable this language is! Theologians have 
thought that it was God's way of preventing man from 
attaining an immortal existence in this world. It was not 
that. So long as one does not mix good and evil in his 
heart and thus profane holy things, he is in a savable 
state; but if he becomes guilty of diliberate profanation, 
he commits the sin that cannot be cured in this world 
nor in the world to come. To eat of the tree of life after 
they had turned their hearts to the world — to put forth 
their hand and pluck the fruit of that tree — meant to 
attempt to enter into interior things, holy things, from 
their ownhood and own power; and to do this would 
mean to live forever in evil — in a state of utter profana- 
tion. Seeing this, what a mercy that a cherub should 
stand there to prevent such an awful crime! 

And here in the east of the garden appeared also the 
flaming sword, turning itself every way to guard the tree 
of life. This flaming sword was the self-love of those 
fallen people, with its insane cupidities and persuasions 
which desire to enter into holy things, and by so doing pro- 
faned them. The sword of flame turned every way, and 
thus, prevented profaaation. 

It is the same today. The Lord's providence prevents 

69 



evil men from entering into and thus profaning the inter- 
nal things of the Word. A flame, as of a sword, turns 
every way to guard the Lord's Word and doctrine. He 
hides these interior things from the wise and prudent. 
The man-child is caught up to the throne of God and the 
woman finds a place in the wilderness. 

CAIN AND ABEL 

The story of the birth of Cain and Abel is told in very 
simple and direct language. "Adam knew his wife, and 
she conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a 
man from the Lord. And she again bare his brother Abel. 
And Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of 
the ground.' ' 

These events occurred after Adam and his wife had been 
expelled from Eden; and this is a fact that bears with 
tremendous import upon the whole subject we are to con- 
sider. 

The story is an allegory; but it is none the less inspired 
Scripture on that account. The Lord has revealed its 
Divine meaning, and it comes to us full of heavenly instruc- 
tion. We are still studying the history of the Most An- 
cient Church, but we are studying that period of its history 
in which doctrinal heresies had their rise. 

So long as the Most Ancient Church was in Eden it had 
no doctrine as a thing to be studied ; but when it lost its 
Edenic state, it came into mental obscurity and could no 
longer be led from within. 

The Adamic Church having fallen from its first estate, 
there arose in it different views of faith and life; having 
turned their minds outward to mere sensuous reasoning, 

70 



it began to act from its selfhood. This introduced a 
dividing principle into the church ; and under the influence 
of self, sects began to arise in the church, and the de- 
scendants of the original Adamic Church ranged them- 
selves around certain definite principles of faith and life. 

These conditions, as they arose, formed a spiritual 
genealogy. This is what is involved in the story of Adam's 
descendants. The genealogy is the story of the conception 
and birth of religious opinions and sentiments. 

This law has obtained in the Christian Church. There 
was first the Holy Apostolic Catholic Church founded by 
the Lord through the missionary labors of the Apostles 
and their successors. The church was one body. But 
as the love of spiritual dominion and the pride of intelli- 
gence grew up in the heart and mind of the priesthood, 
divisions came, sects arose, and the body of believers 
ranged themselves under different leaders. The first schism 
took the name of Roman Catholic ; the second took the name 
of Greek Catholic; the third took the name of Anglican 
Catholic. In this way one sect was propagated from 
another in the original Catholic Curch. Besides these 
three divisions, there were a great many minor Catholic 
sects following the opinions of their respective founders. 

The same is true of the Protestant Church. It branched 
out into almost innumerable sects, each claiming to have 
the whole truth. So that if it were our custom to write 
church history as the ancients did, we should have an 
ecclesiastical history that would read very much like the 
history we are considering. 

The story of Cain and Abel becomes clear in its teach- 
ing when viewed from this standpoint. Cain and Abel are 

71 



not to be understood as individuals, but as symbolizing two 
different classes of religious sentiments and doctrines that 
grew up in the Adamic Church. So long as the Adamic 
Church maintained its integrity, the minds of its members 
were united, and all the various faculties of their minds 
existed and acted in harmony. The will loved what was 
good, and from that good, the understanding perceived 
what was true. 

But when the Adamic Church turned its mind out and 
down to the sense plane and sought to enter into interior 
things from mere sensuous knowledge, the two faculties 
the will and the understanding, ceased to act as one. The 
harmony of the moral creation was broken up. The will 
and the understanding began to act against each other, 
and in course of time there developed two types of church- 
men. One of these types was called Cain; the other was 
called Abel. 

The Cainites were people who had an intellectual knowl- 
edge of what was good and true, but exalted that knowledge 
into mere faith and claimed that faith without works, 
was the all of religion. Thus arose the heresy of faith 
alone in the Adamic Church. 

Abel was the name given to those, who, while they did 
not disparage faith, nor ignore the place spiritual knowledge 
held in the church, saw that charity was superior to knowl- 
edge and the mere doctrine of faith. Thus side by side 
these two sects grew in the Adamic Church, the Cainites 
claiming that faith was a more excellent and saving quality 
than charity, and the Abelites claiming that charity was 
the great and distinguishing mark of churchmanship. 
Both of these sects professed to serve the Lord, but each 
had a different principle and motive in that service. 

72 



Cain was the firstborn of Adam. It was natural that 
he should come first; for in eating of the forbidden fruit, 
the Adamic Church chose knowledge as a thing above 
obedience; and in thus placing the cultivation of the intell- 
ect above the cleansing of the heart, the first outcome — the 
first spiritual conception and birth of the church — could 
not have been other than the doctrine of faith as a thing 
separate from charity and forming the sole ground of 
acceptance with the Lord. All who accepted this doctrine 
were denominated Cain. 

Abel was the second son of the Adamic Church. He 
stands for the doctrine that charity is the supreme char- 
acteristic of the truly religious man. The Abelites were 
those who cultivated the good of charity in their hearts 
and practiced it in their lives. They loved the Lord; 
they loved each other. They had faith, but it was not 
made the prominent thing in their religious life. Charity 
of life was their principal quest. They were humble, 
gentle, kind and loving. They believed, but they laid 
the emphasis upon the loving and doing side of religion. 

Here, then, we see the two branches into which the great 
Adamic Church was divided — Cain being the branch that 
placed the all of religion in mere faith alone, and Abel the 
branch that stood for charity as the embodiment and true 
expression of faith. Look at the respective occupations of 
these two brothers. Cain was a tiller of the ground. Abel 
was a shepherd. Cain a tiller of the ground! How full of 
meaning in relation to what he stands for that expression 
is! The ground mentioned here is the external or natural 
plane of the mind ; and by Cain tilling this ground is meant 
the labor bestowed upon the cultivation of the external 
mind in making it fruitful in the production of theories of 

73 



faith as a thing apart from the daily life. The Cainites 
did what the same kind of faith-alone people did and do in 
the Christian Church. For instance — the Apostolic Church 
worshipped one Lord, and had one faith and one baptism. 
It was a true church. But the schismatic bodies formed 
in it invented theories of the Trinity, theories of Atonement, 
theories of Salvation, theories of Faith, almost without 
number. What was the age of the Councils but a long 
period in which Cain did nothing else than till the ground? 
The various and conflicting doctrines of Catholic and 
Protestant theology are only the reward of the labor be- 
stowed by Cain in the Christian Church, on the ground he 
has tilled. It was thus in the Adamic Church. The in- 
tellect of the Cainites was busy tilling the ground of faith 
alone. Abel was a shepherd. Spiritually thought of, a 
shepherd is one who exercises the good of charity ; and as a 
" keeper of sheep," Abel stands for what this truly religious 
branch of the Adamic Church was daily doing — keeping 
the affections of their hearts pure in the sight of their 
Heavenly Father. The Abelites employed their time in 
promoting the life of charity in themselves and in others. 
They were keepers of spiritual sheep. Not despising — 
not undervaluing the faith side of religion; for they knew 
that without faith it was impossible to please their Heaven- 
ly Father; yet they made the life of religion to consist in 
that principle of charity that as St. Paul says, "Vaunteth 
not itself and is not puffed up." 

THE OFFERINGS OF CAIN AND ABEL 

The offerings of Cain and Abel have suggested a difficulty 
to those who know that ceremonial worship did not have 
its rise until a later period, that is, until the Ancient Church 

74 



was established among the descendants of Noah; but no 
difficulty really exists. The original Adamic Church had 
an internal perception of the correspondence of natural 
objects to spiritual realities; all of their compositions were 
structured according to the law of correspondence and their 
mode of conversing was correspondential. They employed 
the objects of nature to express their spiritual ideas. This 
was especially true of the animal kingdom. When, for 
instance, we read of Adam giving names to the animals 
that are said to have been brought to him, we are not to 
think of natural names given to natural animals, but in- 
stead we are to think of the church giving a celestial 
quality to the various affections and thoughts of the mind. 
So of the fruits of the ground. They were, to the Most 
Ancient Church, symbols of the fruits of the mind. The 
worship or offering of Cain and Abel was not therefore 
what we understand by ceremonial worship. This did not 
begin until in the Ancient and succeeding churches, men 
lost the spiritual ideas of worship and formed a worship 
with the things that in the beginning were spoken of only 
as symbols of celestial affections and thoughts. 

The period in the Adamic Church pictured to us in the 
story of Cain and Abel, was not far enough removed from 
the original state of the church as to require ceremonial 
worship. This state came, however; and when it did 
come, the things, the names of which only were mentioned 
in connection with worship, began to be used. Here was 
the origin of outward sacrificial worship. In the original 
Adamic Church, Cain was the name given to those who 
made religion to consist in faith without charity. The 
people of this Cainitish sect in the Most Ancient Church 
who adopted this doctrine had their own mode and prin- 

75 



ciple of worship. At first there was something of charity 
among the Cainites. They did not begin as they ended. 
They underwent a gradual decline. Each step they took 
was away from their original regard for charity, until they 
finally eliminated it entirely from their lives and from their 
worship of the Lord. 

This is pointed out in the allegory itself. It is said: 
"And in the process of time it came to pass that Cain 
brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the 
Lord." Adam when expelled from the garden was sent 
forth to till the ground from whence he was taken. The 
ground Adam was sent forth to till was the external man. 
The external man is the ground on which the celestial and 
spiritual states of the internal man rest. They must be 
grounded in what is natural ; for the external mind is to the 
more interior things of the soul what the earth is to the 
body. 

The original Adamic Church was made of the dust of 
this ground, which means that as the most ancient man 
rose into the life of celestial regeneration, a human quality 
was given to the most external plane of his mind. The 
Lord, in the gospel, uses the ground in a spiritual sense. 
He said: "The kingdom of heaven is as if a man should 
cast seed into the ground.'' 1 And in the parable of the 
Sower, He speaks of the seed falling on "good ground." 
It is plainly to be seen that in these instances, the Lord 
used natural ground in a symbolic sense as denoting the 
external mind of man. 

Now, notice one important thing. Cain did not bring 
to the Lord an offering of the fruit of seeds sown in the 
ground. He brought of the fruit of the ground and not the 
fruit of the seeds. Do we see the point? The fruit of the 

76 



ground represented simply the works — the deeds — of the 
external man. By the external man, the church writings 
do not mean man's physical body. In the psychology of 
the church, the external man is formed of the affections, 
thoughts and knowledge that are gathered from the natural 
world and which form the exterior plane of man as a spiritual 
being. The natural body, strictly speaking, is no part of 
man. It is only a material scaffolding within which the 
external man and the higher spiritual man are being reared. 

The internal man is created on a level with heaven. He 
is so formed that he can see and love the things of heaven. 
The external man is created on a level with the world and 
is formed to see and love the things of the world. 

In a perfectly regenerated man these two, the internal 
man and the external, act as one. But in the man whose 
loves are evil, the internal man is closed to heaven and his 
external man only is open and active. The quality of the 
external mind in such a man is evil. He is separated, in 
the motive of his life, from all that is of heaven. He be- 
comes a worldly man, no matter how much memory 
knowledge he may have of spiritual things; and the good 
he does is done from himself and not from the acknowledge- 
ment of the Lord. This is what is meant by the ground of 
which Cain was a tiller. The religion, therefore, of the 
Cainites had not anything from the Lord in it. It was the 
fruit of the ground — mere knowledge, mere form — a body 
that had no soul in it. How could it be acceptable unto 
the Lord? It was heartless. Faith alone can never be a 
thing of Divine regard. Faith as a thing by itself is mere 
self-derived intelligence. It belongs to the external man 
separated from its proper internal — the fruit of the ground 

77 



— and is not accepted by the Lord. This is why Cain's 
offering was rejected. 

Look now at Abel. The Lord had respect unto Abel's 
offering because he, as representing the branch of the Adamic 
Church principled in charity, brought to the Lord the 
offering of a sincere and good heart. Under the ceremonial 
law, offerings taken from the flock were lambs, sheep, rams 
and goats. These stood for the good things of charity. 
The Abelites were full of innocence and charity. They 
worshipped the Lord with their whole heart. Their faith 
was only the form of their charity, and their charity con- 
sisted in shunning evils as sins against God and in doing 
good from Him. 

There is no real charity without innocence ; and innocence 
is the quality of singlemindedness — a willingness to be led 
by the Lord alone. As Abel stands, in this allegory, for all 
who preserved in the church the principle and life of charity, 
his bringing to the Lord, as an offering, the firstlings of the 
flock, which were lambs, therefore the quality of the wor- 
ship of the Abelites that made it acceptable unto the Lord 
was innocence. All that made them men of charity with 
its innocence of life, came to them from the Lord, and they 
acknowledged Him in every form of their charitable and 
innocent lives, and worshipped Him from the good of 
charity. 

The Abelites were not without faith, but their faith was 
a living and doing faith — a faith made perfect by love. 
They knew their Heavenly Father's will; they believed His 
word; but they also did their Heavenly Father's will and 
Word. This is why the Lord had respect unto Abel's offer- 
ing. 

When Cain's offering was rejected, it is said: "He was 

78 



very wroth and his countenance fell." How expressive 
this is! Faith alone has in it the wrath that is to come to 
those who adopt it as a principle of religion. Cain's anger 
is the evil that fills the place in the heart that charity should 
occupy. The falling of Cain's countenance expresses the 
dreadful state of those long-ago faith-alone people of the 
Adamic age; for the changes that take place with the 
countenance indicate corresponding and causal changes in 
the mind. With Abel it was different. Worship from 
charity was acceptable to the Lord ; and the Abelites must 
have experienced in their hearts the sweetness of their 
communion in worship, with their good and Divine Father 
in heaven. 

THE DEATH OF ABEL: CAIN A FUGITIVE AND 

VAGABOND 

The Cainitish sect in the Adamic Church had gone on 
increasing in wickedness; for it is as true of a false and 
heretical sect, of a declining church, as it is of an individ- 
ual, that unless it repents of its evils and abandons its false 
teaching, it will continue to sink lower and lower in the 
moral scale. 

This was the case with the Cainites. At first they were 
not wholly bad. They had, it is true, adopted a false 
doctrine, but in the beginning they retained something of 
charity. But the faith-alone doctrine for which they stood 
involved the deadly falsity that religion was merely for 
the intellect. And this involved falsity gradually led them 
to less and less regard for charity, until it culminated in the 
utter rejection and death of charity in their hearts and 
lives. 

This is clearly pointed out in the allegory: "And Cain 

79 



talked with Abel, his brother; and it came to pass when 
they were in the field that Cain rose up against Abel, his 
brother, and slew him." 

The idea expressed here is that of an angry dispute. 
Cain was the aggressor. He talked or disputed with Abel. 
He rose up and slew him. We must think of two distinct 
branches of the Adamic Church, one of which was called 
Cain and stood for the doctrine that faith is the essential 
and first thing of the church, and the other called Abel, 
which stood for the doctrine that charity was the essential 
of the church. These two branches of the Adamic Church 
were involved in a theological controversy, and each was 
seeking an ascendency over the other. 

It was not unlike the controversies that have arisen in 
the Christian Church. The original catholic church of 
Jesus Christ was one. St. Paul gloried in the fact that it 
had one Lord, one faith, and one baptism. Rome grew to 
be the most important Episcopal See in the church, and 
the Bishop of Rome saw the way clear to establish himself 
in the chair of St. Peter as the universal bishop of Christen- 
dom, and he did it. But his claim was denied by the 
Eastern Church; and after several centuries of bitter con- 
troversy, the Eastern Church broke off communion with 
the church in the west and installed a Patriarch at Con- 
stantinople as the spiritual head of the Eastern Church. 
These two branches of the original Catholic Church, which 
died as Adam is said to have died, have been in one sense 
the Cain and Abel of the Catholic Church. Rome, as 
Cain, has been arrogant and intolerant. It has destroyed 
the principle of charity and has had no mercy for those who 
dared to differ in opinion from its edicts and bulls. 

The same thing has been realized in Protestant Chris- 

80 



tianity. The long and angry disputes that took place be- 
tween the Lutheran, Calvinistie and Arminian sects in the 
Protestant Church come readily to mind. Like Cain and 
Abel, these sects have talked together in the field; but it 
has been vehement and invective talk. 

Think of the strife — the battle that was fought between 
Luther and Erasmus. Luther rose up like Cain. He said: 
"That exasperated viper Erasmus has again attacked me." 
Servetus dared to controvert one of John Calvin's pet 
theories; and, like Cain, Calvin rose up, caused him to be 
apprehended, accused him of blasphemy, had him con- 
demned as a heretic and consigned to the flames. 

These facts of church history help us to an understanding 
of the story we are considering. The Cainites were faith- 
alone people. They had no regard for charity. The 
Abelites were of a sweet and affirmative disposition. They 
had no quarrel with faith as such; but they did see that 
standing alone, it was a worthless, dead thing. They 
would have nothing to do with faith alone. They saw 
where it would lead those who adopted it. The Cainites 
would have nothing to do with charity. Religion, with 
them, was a matter of faith apart from the life. This was 
the dispute in the field. 

This division having entered into the Most Ancient 
Church, doctrinal controversies arose in many forms, and 
those who ranged themselves on the side of faith alone 
drew to themselves great numbers who saw in the Cainitish 
doctrine that which favored their lusts and pride of in- 
telligence; and as a consequence the Abelites, who loved 
peace and were actuated by an affirmative spirit, suffered 
at the hands of the larger and more powerful sect of Cainites. 
They submitted to persecution and sought in all their 

81 



trials to exhibit the true spirit of religion. Still Cain rose 
up. Think of that expression: "Cain rose up." You 
see in it the idea of exaltation — of superiority. This is pre- 
cisely the state that faith alone produces in the mind. It 
exalts creeds above life — forms above the genuine spirit of 
religion. And those who believe that faith, mere doctrine, 
is the essential of the church are exalted in their own esteem. 
They rise up in their regard for doctrine and form and 
claim to be superior to those who differ from them. 

Our own beloved church is not entirely free from this 
spirit. We are often tempted to place more importance 
upon a correct knowledge of doctrine than upon a correct 
life. It is very difficult for some of us to acknowledge that 
one may be in the life of the internal sense of the Word 
without an intelligent understanding of the internal sense 
of the Word as given in the church writings. We have had 
many disputes along these lines. We must guard against 
this dreadful state; for whoever is in good, from the Lord, 
comes into the spirit of the Word when he reads it. We 
must entertain no unkindly sentiments against those who 
may differ from us in doctrine. 

This is what the Cainites failed to do. They tried to 
establish the pre-eminence of faith, and they finally did it, 
but it was done at a dreadful cost. " Cain rose up and slew 
Abel, his brother." The story of the natural murder is 
introduced into the allegory to represent the spiritual 
murder that had been committed in the hearts of the 
Cainites. Abel is murdered in all who destroy the life of 
charity in themselves by exalting faith above it. So when 
the Cainites had slain Abel in their hearts — when they 
made faith the essential of the church, they rested not until 
they had exterminated the Abelites from the church. Abel 

82 



was slain. We hear nothing more of him. Faith alone 
ruled men's hearts. 

What could come upon the people who perpetrated so 
dreadful a spiritual crime but the evils that are represented 
by the curses upon Cain? 

The Lord is represented as asking Cain, " Where is thy 
brother Abel?" This question conveys the idea of an 
internal dictate to the conscience of those who had slain 
charity, as to what had become of it. It means this: 
" There was once peace and tranquillity in the church; now 
there is discord and division; what has become of charity? 
These things could not exist if charity were alive and 
active. Where is charity? 

But the faith-alone people of the long ago, while they 
stood convicted by this dictate, instead of repenting of 
their crime, made an effort to justify it. Cain said: "Am 
I my brother's keeper?" This expressed the utterly fallen 
state of these Cainites. They had no regard for charity. 
"What have we to do with charity? Our business is to 
defend and establish faith." 

Then came the curses. The ground would not yield its 
strength; and Cain would become a fugitive and a vaga- 
bond. It was so. The external mind of the Cainites pro- 
duced heresy after heresy, each one more dreadful than the 
former, until this branch of the Adamic Church perished 
in its own evils. 

Cain became a fugitive. The spiritual idea is that of 
one who shirks his duty. This is what the Cainites did. 
They ran away from every demand of duty. Their wills 
were turned away from the Lord — they ran away from the 
practice of goodness. Cain also became a vagabond, a 

83 



wanderer. It was so with the Cainites. They had no 
settled spiritual habitation. Their understandings had no 
settled conceptions of right. These are curses, but they 
were not Divine inflictions. They came as the result of the 
rejecting and slaying of the principle of charity. "Evil 
shall slay the wicked.' ' 



CAIN IN THE LAND OF NOD: THE BIRTH OF 

ENOCH 

After Cain had slain his brother Abel, he is said to have 
"gone out from the presence of the Lord." The word 
presence does not express the idea intended to be conveyed. 
The true rendering is face. "And Cain went out from the 
face of the Lord, and dwelt in the land of Nod toward the 
east of Eden." This describes the spiritual result, which 
followed in the Cainite sect consequent upon the destruc- 
tion and complete elimination of the principle of charity 
denoted by Abel. 

We can all see that no one can be separated from the 
omnipresent God; for it is written: "whither shall I go 
from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence? 
If I ascend up to heaven, thou art there; if I make my bed 
in hell, behold, thou art there. If I take the wings of the 
morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even 
there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall 
hold me. Yea, darkness hideth not from thee; but the 
night shineth as the day; the darkness and the light are 
both alike to thee." 

From this we see that something deeper is involved in 
the statement "that Cain went out from the face of the 

84 



Lord" than is indicated by the mere letter. What is the 
deeper meaning? 

The Divine Word frequently speaks of the Lord's pres- 
ence, also of His face; and, thought of spiritually, these two 
expressions mean very different conditions. The under- 
standing is the created receptacle of the Lord's truth; and 
it is by means of the Divine truth in the understanding 
that man perceives the Lord's presence. The will is the 
created receptacle of the Lord's love; and it is by means of 
the Divine love in the will that man sees the Lord's face. 
" Presence," then, refers to the understanding and "face" 
to the will. 

The sect called Cain, in this story, retained many truths 
in the understanding; and in that sense did not lose the 
Lord's presence; for He was present by means of their 
knowledge of truth; but this sect departed entirely from 
the principle and life of charity; they averted and turned 
their wills away from the Divine love; and that is what is 
meant by Cain going out from the face of the Lord. 

A man's face is an index of his heart. He may prevent 
his thoughts from appearing before men, but he cannot 
prevent the affections of his heart from showing themselves 
in his face. Modesty cannot do otherwise than blush 
when it is offended. Guilt, when brought home to a man, 
makes the face turn pale. This is a law. God's face is 
therefore used in the Bible, to denote His love. Thus all 
who are in deep charity of life see the Lord's face. 
The Cainites had departed from charity; they were in 
mere faith alone; therefore Cain, the name given to the 
sect which separated from the Adamic Church, and which 
exalted faith above charity, lost the perception of the Divine 
love — went out or away from the Lord's face. 

85 



Going farther and farther away from the thought and 
practice of charity, they came into a state of mind repre- 
sented, in this allegory, by the Land of Nod. This land 
was not a geographic locality. It means almost the same 
thing that Is indicated by the "far country" in the parable 
of the Prodigal Son. It is an untranslated Hebrew word, 
and means literally a state of exile and vagabondism. Cain 
said of himself: " I shall be a fugitive and vagabond in the 
earth. " This, as we have seen, indicated the internal 
state of the Cainites. Their hearts ran away from every 
obligation of charity and their understandings had no 
settled convictions on questions of right and wrong. This 
was their spiritual state. 

Now, it is a spiritual law that one's internal state will 
ultimately lead one into an environment that corresponds 
to it. This law worked a change in the spiritual environ- 
ment of the Cainites. They withdrew from the influence 
of the Divine love and came and dwelt in an external state 
denoted by the land of Nod. When a man gives way to 
doubt and uncertainty in regard to the things of faith, he 
becomes a mental wanderer and has no spiritual habitation ; 
and if goodness is excluded from the heart at the same 
time, such a man begins to regard all matters of faith and 
religious truth as things of mere human speculation. No 
man can retain a clear belief in the truth unless he is in the 
endeavor to live a life of charity. The faith of the dis- 
obedient man is a wandering thing; he is driven about by 
every wind of doctrine. Faith without charity is therefore 
weak and unstable, and the heart has no defense against 
the inrush of evils of every kind. 

This was realized in the lives of the Cainites. This is 

86 



what is meant by Cain going out from the face of God and 
dwelling in the land of Nod. 

But notice one thing: The land of Nod was toward the 
east of Eden. Here we see a great mercy. The east is 
the symbol of the Lord — the source of all spiritual heat and 
light. Eden is the symbol of the love that turns the mind 
toward the Lord and disposes it to receive light from Him. 
So when it is said that Cain dwelt in Nod toward the east 
of Eden, there is conveyed the idea that there still re- 
mained with the Cainites the capacity of knowledge con- 
cerning what was genuinely good and true. Their under- 
standings were toward the east of Eden. Their minds 
were not, at this time, wholly closed against the knowledge 
of truth: They still retained the capacity of knowing the 
truth. 

We see this in our own day. There are men who are 
driven hither and thither doctrinally, who are in fluctuat- 
ing and doubtful states; and yet they dwell toward the 
east of Eden — have capacity left for believing in the good 
and the true. All such can be rescued. Many such have 
been rescued and brought into beautiful states of faith and 
life. But they must be rescued. If not, they finally close 
the way toward the east of Eden and come into the dreadful 
state that results from the infernal marriage of evil and 
falsity in their minds. 

This happened to the Cainites. It is told in the story of 
Cain knowing his wife in the land of Nod. The wife is intro- 
duced, into the story of the spiritual decline of this sect of 
the Most Ancient Church, to represent the state of it 
when it went out from what is denoted by the face of the 
Lord. 

The faith that belongs to the understanding is as a hus- 

%7 



band and the love that belongs to the will is as a wife. In 
a state of regeneration, the faith of the understanding is 
married to love in the will. This is the heavenly marriage 
of good and truth. But in the unregenerate, falsity in the 
understanding is married to evil in the will. This is the 
infernal marriage of evil and falsity. The former consti- 
tutes heaven, the latter constitutes hell. 

The Cainites were in faith alone; Cain's wife was the 
affection in the heart for that doctrine. It was there from 
the beginning; for it is not said that he found and married 
his wife in the land of Nod, but that he knew her in the land 
of Nod. 

What does this mean? It means that the Cainites came 
into a moral state in which they made prominent, con- 
firmed and were conjoined to the affection in their hearts 
for the doctrine, for the heresy, of salvation by faith alone. 
This became the permanent state of the people called Cain. 
They were closely conjoined to the affection that grew up in 
their hearts for the persuasion of faith separate from charity. 

The heresy of faith alone became then the parent of 
other heresies. Enoch, who is said to have been born to 
Cain, was another heresy that sprang up in this schismatic 
branch of the Most Ancient Church. And from it other 
heresies descended, like sons from a father. Thus it is 
said: "Unto Enoch was born Irad; and Irad begat Mehu- 
jeal, and Mehujeal begat Methusael and Methusael begat 
Lamech." These names stand for derivitive heresies in 
the Cainite line of departure from Adam. 

The city which Cain is said to have built, and named 
after his son Enoch, represents the doctrine which the 
Cainites constructed as an intellectual dwelling place for 
the heresy of faith alone. This very thing has been done 

88 



over again in the Christian Church. The doctrine of the 
vicarious atonement, and the imputed righteousness of 
Christ, whereby the sinner is saved by mere faith alone, is 
the city Cain built for his son in Protestant Christianity. 

THE BIRTH OF SETH: HIS DESCENDANTS: 
ENOCH'S WALK WITH GOD 

The Cainitish, or faith alone branch of the Adamic 
Church, ended in Lamech. Lamech is represented as say- 
ing to his wives: "Hear my voice, ye wives of Lamech; 
hearken unto my speech; for I have slain a man to my 
wounding, and a young man to my hurt." Lamech is not 
the name of an individual. The name stands for a process 
which we call vastation. Vastation is of two kinds. With 
the interiorily good, there takes place a vastation, or separ- 
ation from them of external evils and falsities — things that 
were not of their inner love or life. And with the evil, 
there takes place a vastation or separation from them, of 
all good and truth. This is the judgment into which all 
come after death ; for in the other life one is divested of the 
moral qualities, be they good or evil, that do not form a 
part of one's inner life. This same law obtains in the 
church. 

The Cainites having adopted the principle of faith alone 
— having rejected charity as of no consequence, began to 
undergo the process of spiritual vastation. This extended 
through many generations, each generation extinguishing 
more and more the principle of faith, until the vastation 
was complete. All faith, among the Cainites, perished; 
all charity disappeared. This complete vastation was 
personified under the name Lamech. The end had come. 
The very semblance of religion disappeared. This sad 

89 



state was expressed in the words: "I have slain a man to 
my wounding, and a young man to my hurt." 

The very memory of the truth perished among the 
Cainites and every impulse of charity died. Nothing more 
is said of this sect. It had its rise, ran its course and died. 

But the Lord never leaves Himself without a witness in 
the world. So we find that there came what may be called 
a Reformation in the original Adamic Church. We read: 
"And Adam knew his wife again, and she bare him a son, 
and called his name Seth; for God hath appointed me an- 
other seed instead of Abel." Here arose the Sethite 
branch of the Most Ancient Church. This branch of the 
church was gifted with a new principle of faith; and from 
it there was to be developed a true charity of life. 

Seth represents not only the new principle of faith and 
the charity that was implanted in it, but also the people 
who embraced the new faith. Abel represented the charity 
which, in the beginning, was regarded as the chief thing of 
religion, but which was destroyed by the false teaching and 
evil living of the Cainites; but now Seth is raised up to 
take the place of Abel whom Cain slew. A new faith was 
given, that from it another branch of the original church 
might come into the life of charity. 

We are led to believe that charity was cultivated by the 
Sethites; for we are told: "Then began men to call upon 
the name of the Lord." This reformed church did not 
fully restore the charity that was represented by Abel ; for 
the charity that came with Seth was not of the same quality 
as that which was destroyed by Cain. Charity, with the 
Sethites, arose more from an intellectual dictate and was 
more external than the charity which Abel represented. 

90 



The channels and fountains of impulsive love were closed, 
and as a consequence, the religious life was lived from a 
more external principle. 

This reformation, like all reform movements in a de- 
clining church, did not continue in its integrity. It 
arrested the decline for a while, as the Protestant Reforma- 
tion did in the Christian Church, but as the Protestant 
Church broke up into almost innumerable churches or 
sects, each sect inventing new creeds and forms of worship 
until the end was reached in the final judgment, so the 
Sethite reformation gave rise to many sects; and among 
them, continued to decline, until it ended among a people 
called Lamech. The Lamech, with whom the Sethite 
branch of the church ended, is not the Lamech with whom 
the Cainite branch of the church ended. They were dis- 
tinct and separate races, but bore the same name, because 
they represented the same thing, namely the vastated state 
of the church. 

At the time treated of in this chapter, there had grown 
up a great variety of doctrines around which ranged a 
great many sects that had severed all connection with the 
original Adamic Church, and which were distinguished 
from each other by appropriate names, much like what we 
see today in the Protestant Church. Each sect was per- 
sonified. Thus Seth represented the new principle of 
faith out of which was to be formed a new charity of life. 
He also represented the people to whom it was given. 
Seeing this, it follows that those, in the genealogy of Seth, 
represent distinct branches and lines of the reformed church 
of the Adamic Age. Here we reach an important feature 
of the antediluvian history — I refer to the extraordinary 

91 



ages the story assigns to Seth, Enos, Cainan, Mahalaleel, 
Jared, Enoch, Methuselah and Lamech. 

Commentators, both Jewish and Christian, have labored 
in vain to reconcile the longevity of these so-called ante- 
diluvian patriarchs with science and the dictate of reason, 
but have utterly failed. The discussion of their attempted 
explanations would not prove of any interest to us, who 
know that the number of years given as the age of these 
supposed patriarchs, when they either begat sons or died, 
stands for the moral quality of the sect they respectively 
represent. We are not reading of persons but of heresies 
and sects. 

One thing, however, is true. As these heresies were em- 
braced by different races of men, they must have persisted 
for many hundreds of years; and some of them must have 
been longer lived than others. There might be an historic 
basis for the idea that the ages assigned in this story cover 
the periods in which these heresies prevailed, although 
that certainly was not the Divine purpose in the use of the 
numbers employed. Religious systems are often given the 
names of their founders and are called by their names 
long after they have passed away. For instance, Israel 
is the name given to the descendants of Jacob. Viewed 
in this light, Israel up to the present time may be said to 
have lived nearly four thousand years. In the Christian 
Church Unitarians and tripersonalists originated in the 
fourth century; and if we wished to personify them under 
the names of Arius and Althanasius, we could say that 
each is fifteen hundred years old. This idea may be useful 
to those who are not prepared for the more spiritual inter- 
pretation of the story of the longevity told in this chapter 
of Genesis. 

92 



Have you noticed the fact that longevity is not predi- 
cated of Cain and his descendants, but only of Seth and his 
descendants? There is a deep spiritual reason for this. 
Cain represented faith. It was a true faith, but it de- 
generated into faith alone. The line of descent from Cain 
is the story of the decline of faith. Faith is primarily a 
thing of the understanding. Faith is short-lived when it 
becomes faith alone. It depends upon the memory for its 
continued existence, and therefore soon dies. This is why 
the Cainitish line is short. The line of descent from Seth is 
long, and immense ages are assigned to the people said to 
have descended from him. The Sethites, were, in the 
beginning, characterized by charity. Charity belongs to 
the will and its affections. Things that affect the intellect 
and memory only, die much sooner than do the things that 
affect the will and the life. The things for which Seth 
stands touched the hearts of men. It was therefore longer 
in dying. 

But divisions came to this branch of the church; and a 
time came when charity was on the verge of perishing. 
Then arose another branch of the church. It was called 
Enoch. He represented a branch of the church that 
gathered into a teaching the things of faith and charity. 
Truths that had been perceived in an internal way, were 
by this branch of the church, collected into a doctrinal 
form and taught in an outward way. The doing of this 
is what is meant by Enoch walking with God. 

The Divine truths which the Enochites collected were 
from the Lord. They did not pretend to originate them. 
This is what is meant by " Enoch was not." God was in 
what they did. They were out of it. And the Divine 
truths collected into doctrine by the Enochites were pre- 

93 



served by the Lord for the use of a new church that was to 
arise. The preservation of these sacred collections is 
what is meant by God taking Enoch. 

THE SONS OF GOD: THE DAUGHTERS OF MEN: 
THE GIANTS OF THE ANCIENT WORLD 

The people of the Most Ancient Church were character- 
ized by a genius which has not been possessed by any of 
the succeeding churches. With the members of the 
Antediluvian church, the will and the understanding were 
immediately conjoined; and because of this they enjoyed 
a state of perception, and from perception, they had 
intuition, and immediately comprehended the highest 
forms of the Divine truth without undergoing the processes 
of reasoning about them. Good, from the Lord, enter- 
ing their wills, flowed directly into their understandings, 
and became in their understandings, truths from good to 
guide them in all the wise and innocent ways of life. 

This exalted celestial state was not suddenly destroyed. 
The decline was very gradual; but the loss of perception 
was eventually effected; for evils of life ultimately closed 
all the inward channels of their souls to the Divine influx. 
This left them in utter spiritual darkness; and as the 
successive generations of that church came, each was more 
and more infixed in evil until the whole Adamic race was 
involved in the most dreadful forms of wickedness. Good 
and truth were successively shut out of the mind of the 
church; both will and understanding were closed to heaven. 
What could result from this inner closure of the mind but 
the inrush of all sorts of evil and false persuasions? These 
persuasions were confirmed as good and true things; and 
from them, the fallen church, was unwilling to recede. 

94 



Thus we read: "The wickedness of man was great in the 
earth, and every imagination of the thoughts of his heart 
was only evil continually." Everything that entered the 
ideas of these fallen people, was turned into lust by their 
corrupt wills. Their wills and understandings acted as 
one faculty. In whatever direction their wills turned, 
their understandings followed. Thus when they came to 
love what was evil, they were, by their very mental struct- 
ure, compelled to think what was false. 

Good and truth could not be stored as remains in their 
minds. When they flowed in, they were profaned, and 
could not be held as a separated plane for the subsequ- 
ent work of regeneration. 

The great miracle of the separation of the understanding 
from the will, thereby making it capable of an elevation 
above the cupidities of the fallen will, had not at this 
point, in the history of the Most Ancient people, been 
effected. Thus with the last posterity of the Most Ancient 
church, there followed the most dreadful states of evils 
and falsities. This appalling state is thus portrayed: 
" It came to pass when men began to multiply on the face 
of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, that the 
sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were 
fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose." 
What does this mean? Literally understood, the whole 
narrative is unsatisfactory. But the Lord's Word is 
spirit and life; and it is only as we see here a Divine par- 
able of the deep corruptions of the Antediluvian race that 
we begin to find the instruction the narrative was intended 
to convey. 

The multiplication of men was the increase of the cor- 
ruptions of the Adamic race; and the multiplication of men 

95 *, : 



on the face of the earth is the parable way of stating the 
wide extent of this corruption in the church. The face of 
the ground is its surface, and this stands for the visible 
aspects of the church, as they exist in the lives of men. 

The people of the church had abandoned the guidance 
of the Lord; they had turned to their own evil loves and 
ways. Their wills and understandings were united in 
evil; and daughters, not sons, were born unto them. The 
daughters born unto them were the dreadful lusts which 
they originated. The daughters of Zion and Jerusalem, 
spoken of so frequently in the Lord's Word, represent the 
genuine affections for goodness and truth in the church; 
but the daughters of Babylon, Philistia and Moab sym- 
bolize the evil affections and lusts of the depraved heart 
of man. Now, as daughters stand for affections which 
belong to the will, so sons stand for the thoughts which 
belong to the understanding. In this narrative, by the 
sons of God are meant the truths of doctrine which still 
remained, at this period, among this last posterity of 
the Most Ancient church. These doctrinal truths had 
descended to them from remote and better posterities of 
the church. They had not been wholly dissipated. 

Now, we see the meaning. These sons of God saw the 
daughters of men that they were fair. This means that 
the remaining truths of doctrine that had come down to 
this posterity through the long line of the Cainites and 
Sethites in the church were drawn down to the level of the 
lusts that had grown up in the wicked hearts of these 
people and were so perverted as to favor those lusts. 
Then the final step was taken; the awful deed was done. 
"They took to them wives of all which they chose.'* 
Think of what this means. When the human mind turns 

96 



away from the Lord's way of good life to the devil's way 
of evil life, it undergoes a marvelous change both in its 
will and in its understanding. The thing it loves supreme- 
ly it thinks about continually and all the knowledge stored 
in the mind is brought down and over to serve and to 
favor the thing that is loved. This is the way men con- 
firm and infix evil loves in themselves. If any truth is 
too powerful to lend itself or to be lent to favor the chosen 
evil, it is cast out of the mind and soon forgotten, while 
all others are drawn into favor with the ruling lusts and 
made to look upon them as fair and good. 

So it was with this last posterity of the Most Ancient 
church. The doctrinal truths, which still lingered among 
men, were drawn down and conjoined to the lusts of their 
hearts. They took them wives of the daughters of men. 
Here was the infernal marriage — a will steeped in evil 
married to an understanding corrupted by falsity. 

What could result from this infernal marriage but 
gigantic evils and falsities of life? Here we see the mean- 
ing of the giants in the Genesis allegory. The mind has 
dimensions as well as the body. When a man excludes 
God, revelation and the church from his mind, he grows 
mighty big in his own intellectual conceit. He regards 
his infidelistic bombast as possessing gigantic proportions; 
and the only bigness he fails to see is the bigness of the 
fool he is. "The fool hath said in his heart there is no 
God." Only the other day one of our atheistic writers 
penned these words: "The time has come when belief in 
the existence of God is confined to men of small culture 
and low mentality." Yes, evil puffs men up in their own 
esteem. They swell up under the imaginary importance 

97 



of their insane phantasies. This is the inevitable result 
of evil confirmed in the life. 

Now, this condition became universal with the people 
treated of in this narrative. These Antediluvian giants 
are called " mighty men which were of old, men of renown/ ' 
This expresses the might and power of the self love which 
they developed. How mighty this love is in every en- 
deavor it makes to attain its end! Self love is a principle 
that seeks its own ends; and it is mighty to bring persons 
and things into a state of servitude to itself. Its friends 
are those whom it is able to use; and its enemies are those 
who stand in its way. And these giants were of old. These 
selfish loves were a long time growing. They dated back 
to the disobedience in Eden. They had been cumulative. 
Now, they reached the full measure of their iniquity and 
attained a degree of degradation that left men without 
even the desire for anything better. The flowing in of 
evil drove all goodness out of their hearts; and with the 
loss of goodness, all perceptions of truth perished. Their 
minds were given over to abominable persuasions — to 
deadly phantasies. All flesh had corrupted itself. This 
last posterity of the original Adamic church perished 
by spiritual, yea by physical suffocation; and that is why 
the end of the Most Ancient Church is told under the form 
of the story of a flood which innundated and suffocated 
all flesh. The new or Ancient church, which succeeded 
the Adamic church, was formed among those who had 
never been a real part of the Most Ancient church. 

THE BUILDING OF THE ARK: THE CLEAN AND 

THE UNCLEAN BEASTS 

The Most Ancient Church came to its final end in the 

98 



great wickedness portrayed under the parable of the sons 
of God seeing the daughters of men that they were fair 
and taking to themselves wives of the daughters of men. 
Immediately following upon this, we read: "And God saw 
that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and 
that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was 
only evil continually.' Then follows a statement of the 
final result of this state of wickedness. We read: "And 
the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created 
from the face of the earth. " This is the language of 
appearances, for it was evil that destroyed the fallen 
people of the Most Ancient Church. The Lord seeks to 
save; He is not a destroyer. But the evil look upon the 
Lord as the cause of their misery; and the letter of the 
Bible expresses in the language of appearances, their 
thought of the Lord. The genuine truth is expressed else- 
where in the Scripture, where it is said: "Evil shall slay 
the wicked." 

The spiritual destruction that overtook the last posterity 
of the Most Ancient Church came as the result of their 
own evil state. The church ended with them. The celes- 
tial dispensation closed. But the Lord never leaves Him- 
self without a witness in the earth. When one dispensa- 
tion of religion closes, the Lord immediately raises up a 
new dispensation of the church; and in doing so, He begins 
with the remnant of good people in the consummated 
church — people who while nominally of it are not irre- 
trievably involved in its evils and falsities, but are capable 
of deliverance from them. This remnant constitutes the 
nucleus of the New Church which arises as the means of 
salvation to mankind. 

At the end of the Adamic Church, this remnant was 

99 



represented by Noah. Here, as was the case with Adam 
we are not to think of an individual by the name of Noah, 
but we are to think of all the people of the consummated 
Adamic Church who were capable of being saved by being 
formed into a new church. These were the remnant, and 
in this Divine allegory, they are personified and called 
Noah. Thus it is said: "But Noah found grace in the 
eyes of the Lord." There were with the people called 
Noah remains of good — things that had been preserved 
and that served as a plane on which the Lord's spirit could 
act in effecting a new process of regeneration. These re- 
mains are meant by these words: "Noah was a just man 
and perfect in his generation; and Noah walked with God." 
This brings us to the consideration of one of the most 
marvelous things in connection with the Divine parable — 
we refer to the organic and structural change which the 
Lord, in His Divine mercy, effected in the minds of the 
Noatic people. 

In the Adamic people, the will and the understanding 
were united. They acted not as two, but as one faculty. 
In whatever direction their wills turned, their understand- 
ings took the same course. This was their distinctive 
genius. The two parts of their mental structure cohered 
and formed one. Good from the Lord flowed directly into 
their wills, and because their understandings were immed- 
iately connected with their wills, good passed from their 
wills into their understandings in a direct way and was 
formed into truth. This peculiarity of mental structure 
led them, in the beginning, to the very highest celestial 
attainment and life. But when they fell away from the 
Lord, they still retained this peculiarity of mental structure 
and carried it down with them into all the moral corrup- 

100 



tions into which they descended. Loving what was evil 
they could not do otherwise than believe what was false. 
Do we see what this led to? Their minds were like a 
glutinous substance. When good and truth touched them 
they became glued to them and profaned. Remains of 
good and truth could not be implanted in them, for their 
genius was such that there was no separate plane in their 
minds for such goods and truths to adhere to. This was 
the spiritual cause for the utter extinction, physically and 
spiritually, of the last posterity of the Most Ancient 
Church. Noah, who is said to have found grace in the 
eyes of the Lord, represents, as we have said, the remnant 
in the Most Ancient Church who were not totally involved 
in this condition; and in this remnant, the Lord wrought 
the mighty miracle of the separation of their intellectual 
principle from their fallen and corrupt wills. This was a 
great miracle as well as an exhibition of the profoundest 
mercy; for it at once enabled them to lift their intellects 
above their corrupt hearts and learn what was good and 
true, and thus have formed in the intellectual part of their 
minds a new will principle above and apart from their 
fallen proprium. 

This made the storing of remains possible; and it also 
rendered an outward revelation of truth necessary. It also 
ushered into existence an entirely new mental and spiritual 
genius. The celestial life, as it had been, would be no 
more. That plane of the mind — of the race mind, closed 
with the end of the Most Ancient Church. A spiritual 
church — a church on a discretely lower plane of the race 
mind, arose. It commenced with the people called Noah. 
It was a new dispensation of religion. It was instituted 
by a Divine revelation — by a sacred scripture, which we 

101 



know as the Ancient Word. This sacred Word was a book 
of Divine symbols. The truths which were inwardly re- 
vealed to the Most Ancient Church and which were collected 
and preserved by the people called Enoch, when the in- 
tuitive faculty was perishing in the church, were outwardly 
revealed to the understandings of the Noetic people. 
We do not have the time to dwell upon this story of the 
Ancient word further than to say that it gave rise to the 
Ancient or Spiritual church; that the first eleven chapters 
of Genesis belonged originally to it and that in the Hebrew 
Scripture, it is quoted and certain of the books that formed 
it mentioned by name, such, for instance, as the book of 
the wars of Jehovah, the book of Jasher and the book of 
the Enunciators. This outward revelation of the Word 
was made necessary because of the structural change that 
was effected in the mental organization of the Noetic race, 
for their intellectual part being separated from their will, 
the only light upon religious subjects that could reach 
them must come into their understandings in an external 
way. By receiving and obeying the truth thus communi- 
cated to them, they formed a new will, a will of obedience 
in their understandings, and were, in time, regenerated 
by the truth. 

This is what is meant by the Lord's command to Noah 
to build the ark. The ark is the symbol of the church 
that was formed in them ; for the church is not a mere out- 
ward ecclesiasticism, but is the kingdom of God in human 
souls. This work of building up in their lives the principles 
of the kingdom of God is told under the allegorical form 
of Noah building an ark. The allegory is God's beautiful 
way of telling us of the building of this spiritual church in 
their minds. 

102 



The ark was to be built of gopher wood. This was a 
low order of wood and very inflammable. Do you see the 
lesson? It stood for the concupiscences and peculiar cup- 
idities of the Noetic people. How could these things be 
built into a spiritual ark of safety? Think! The Lord 
begins with man as he finds him. He cannot build with 
material that man does not possess. In the beginning, He 
makes use of our selfishness. He appeals to and works 
with the motives we present to Him — ever leading us on 
to higher and better things. So of the people in this story. 
Their very concupiscences were made use of. They could 
not be led, in the beginning, to regeneration by the love of 
the intrinsic excellence of the truth. At first, their im- 
provement had to be built upon some personal and selfish 
consideration. It is the same with us today. This is 
what is meant by the gopher wood. This, however, was 
a temporary state. 

The same was true of the pitch used; for the ark is said to 
have been pitched within and without. At first, these 
people were protected from the outward invasion of false- 
hood and from the inward seduction of evil by appeals to 
their selfishness. We are no better; for the Lord does, in 
the beginning, the same thing with us. How good and 
merciful He is to accept us as we are! Yes, but He loved 
those Ancient people as He loves us, not for what they were 
but for what they were capable of becoming. The gopher 
wood and the pitch were all they had of themselves to 
begin with. But they did possess remains from the Lord; 
and they were what the Lord reached and ultimately 
unfolded in a life of beautiful spiritual regeneration. While 
the Lord makes use of what is man's in the beginning, yet 
He does it merely as the means of reaching and developing 

103 



what is of His own in man. It was thus that He began 
with the gopher wood and pitch and ended with a redeemed 
and regenerated church. 

The three stories of the ark — what were they, other than 
the three distinct degrees of mental life in the man of the 
Ancient Church? And the beasts, clean and unclean — 
what were they other than the affections and thoughts, 
spiritual and natural, that were brought under the regen- 
erating influence of the Divine truth in the minds of the 
people of the Noetic age? These facts are the spiritual 
realities that lie back of the symbols in the allegory. 

The ark had one door on its side. Could that door be 
anything less than hearing, receiving and obeying the 
voice of the Lord? And the window in the top of the ark — 
do we not see that it was the elevated intellectual prin- 
ciple, which is the spiritual window of the soul, letting in 
the light of the Father's face by which their minds were 
illuminated from heaven? How wonderful the story is! 

THE FLOOD: NOAH AND HIS FAMILY SAVED 

The deluge was a spiritual catastrophe. This statement 
instantly clothes the Divine narrative with a significance 
that disarms science of the objections it has urged against 
belief in it as a physical occurrence. We have neither the 
time nor the disposition to notice these objections. The 
Bible is a Divine book; and its message is spiritual. It 
addresses itself to man as a spiritual being; so that what- 
ever may be the outward form in which it comes, under- 
neath there lies the spiritual instruction, appeal, warning 
or encouragement it was intended to bring to man. The 
Lord, who is the Divine author of the written Word, said: 

104 



"The words that I speak unto you they are spirit and 
they are life." This is true of every inspired book in the 
Holy Word. Seen in this light, the Bible vindicates and 
establishes its claim to Divine inspiration. 

The outward things of history — things that have been 
enacted in the natural world — are not, in themselves, 
Divine revelations. Revelation includes the thought of a 
degree of truth made known to man that he could not 
have discovered by the exercise of any faculty proper to 
his mind. God is the oily way to Himself. He lets down 
the ladder on whose rounds man ascends to a knowledge 
of Him. "The world by wisdom knew not God." 

And so of the story of the flood. If it is believed to be 
the record of outward happenings, there is not in such a 
belief one single element of spirituality, nor one single 
thing that tends to give the mind an exalted conception 
of God. It is only when we regard the narrative in the 
light of a Divine parable that we find the ground of its 
spirituality and learn from it the deep things of God. 
It is a parable. It describes spiritual things under the 
form of natural and corresponding things in the visible 
world of nature. Let us think of it in this way. In gener- 
al the story of the flood is God's own way of telling us of 
the spiritual destruction of the last posterity of the Most 
Ancient Church in the flood of dreadful persuasions and 
abominable evils that they brought upon themselves. It 
is the story of how they were carried down to destruction 
by the falsehoods which they believed and the evils which 
they loved. A natural inundation is used to represent a 
spiritual inundation. 

The effect of this spiritual inundation was (1) to des- 
troy and utterly sweep away the corrupt people of the 

105 



dead and fallen church, and (2) to act as temptations by 
which those of the succeeding or Ancient Church, were 
regenerated. A flood is one of the most familiar sym- 
bols used in the Bible to denote a state of deep and inter- 
ior temptation. The Psalmist prayed: "Save me, O God, 
for the waters are come in unto my soul. I sink in deep 
mire where there is no standing. I am come into deep 
water where the floods overflow me. Let not the water 
floods overflow me, neither let the deep swallow me up." 
David was not speaking of natural water, nor of natural 
floods. He was using the language of correspondence and 
was praying for deliverance from the evil and false principles 
which were infesting his soul. The prophet in portraying 
the certainty of the Lord's protection of those who put 
their trust in Him in times of spiritual distress and tempta- 
tion says: "When the enemy shall come in like a flood 
the spirit of the Lord shall lift up a standard against him." 
The temptations that arise from the sphere of naturalism, 
with which we are all surrounded, are described by the 
prophet in the following language: "Egypt riseth up like 
a flood and his waters are moved like the rivers.'' Our 
Lord said of the house built on the rock: "The rain 
descended and the flood came, but it fell not." But of 
the house built on the sand He said: "The rain descend- 
ed and the flood came and it fell." We all see that by the 
house built on the rock is meant a human character found- 
ed upon the Divine truth which the flood of temptation is 
unable to move; and that the house built on the sand is a 
human character built on wrong principles, which falls 
under the power of temptation as the house on the sand 
was swept away by the flood. 

From these instances, it is easy to be see that the 

106 



Scriptures use natural floods as the expressive symbol of 
spiritual trials and temptations which prove the destruc- 
tion of the wicked but which serve as purifying experiences 
to the good. This is the light in which to view the Mosaic 
story of the deluge. Think! Two sources are assigned for 
the flood; the breaking up of the fountains of the deep, 
and the opening of the windows of heaven. These two 
sources of the flood are clearly spiritual and stand, the 
windows of heaven for the understanding or intellectual 
principle, and the fountains of the deep for the will or 
voluntary principle of the mind. 

The windows of heaven! They are the perceptions of 
the understanding, for it is through intellectual perceptions 
that man sees the things of heaven. In the good, these 
spiritual windows of the heaven that is within are opened 
to admit the light of truth into the mind. But in the 
story of the flood, these windows admitted that which 
was one of the principal sources of destruction ; consequent- 
ly they denote the understanding given over to falsehoods 
and destructive reasonings, by which the whole intellect- 
ual life of the fallen church was inundated and destroyed. 
The fountains of the deep! These deep fountains, or 
fountains of the deep, picture to us the will and its loves. 
In the Bible, the will is compared to the deep because it 
is the receptacle of the deep things of a man's life. The 
good man's will is the deep place of his life; all that he 
thinks and does comes out of the deep places of his heart. 
So of the evil man. His corruptions are deep. Out of 
the fountains of the deep love the good man has for 
the Lord, arise all the holiest joys of his life, and, in like 
manner, out of the fountains of the evil man's deep love 
of himself, arise all the dissatisfactions and unrest of his life. 

107 



In the case of the flood, "the fountains of the deep 
were broken up." Don't you see that this means that 
the will, as a will for goodness, was, in the people of the 
fallen Adamic Church, disrupted; that it had become a 
deep lust? The will of good was broken up and the entire 
voluntary life of the evil people of the Adamic Church 
was given over to lusts of every description. 

Everything in them perished ; not a vestige of the church 
remained. This spiritual destruction is described in 
correspondential language as the covering of the high hills 
under the whole heaven, the submergence of the mountains, 
the death of all flesh, both of fowl and cattle, and beast 
and of every creeping thing. All things of the church 
perished. This was the effect of the flood upon the in- 
corrigibly wicked. But the evils and falsities that end 
a fallen church act as temptations through which the 
members of the new and succeeding church are regenerat- 
ed. Thus the flood, which ended the Most Ancient Church, 
operated to purify the affections and thoughts — to elevate 
and regenerate the members of the succeeding Ancient 
Church. They resisted these evil and false things. They 
had not closed the way to remains; they were capable of 
regeneration. All such were represented by Noah and 
his family. They were the remnant. They endured these 
dreadful temptations and were saved. With them, a 
wind, the spirit of the Lord, passed over the earth of 
their minds, and the waters, the falsities of the dead church, 
were assuaged. Their understandings and wills became 
receptive of truth and love. A new will of obedience was 
formed in their understanding. New influences operated 
upon them, and the waters of temptation gradually abated 
They came, at length, through hard and bitter trials, into 

108 



a state of spiritual love. They reached it through daily 
obedience to the truth. This happy state is beautifully 
described in the allegory: "And the ark rested in the 
seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, 
upon the mountains of Ararat. " 

THE NOETIC CHURCH: THE ABATING OF THE 

WATERS: THE RESTING OF THE ARK ON 

THE MOUNTAIN 

Three distinct things are mentioned in connection with 
Noah: He was just, he was upright, and he walked with 
God. These three are said to be the generations of Noah. 
Now, in what sense were justice, uprightness and obedience, 
or what is the same, walking with God, the generations of 
Noah? If Noah is to be understood as standing merely 
for an individual man, he may have possessed these moral 
excellences, but understood in that way, it is difficult to 
see how justice, uprightness and obedience can be called 
the generations of Noah. The passage reads: " These are 
the generations of Noah. Noah was a just man, and up- 
right in his generation, and Noah walked with God." 
There is no difficulty here; for by Noah is not meant an 
individual, but the new church which was being raised up; 
consequently, the generations of Noah were the great 
cardinal principles of that new church; and these were 
what is meant by justice, uprightness and obedience. 
These virtues as cardinal principles, are called nativities or 
generations, because they were to result from the regenera- 
tive process which the Noetic people would undergo. To 
understand this teaching it will be necessary to divest the 
mind of the modern conception of the word church. We 
think of the church as an ecclesiasticism, as an organiza- 

109 



iton of men and women who accept a definite creed and 
organize for the purpose of propagating a certain set of 
doctrines; but this is not what the Bible and the church 
writings mean by the term church. 

The church is a state of life. It is formed in man by- 
regeneration. This does not mean that the organization 
with its ecclesiastical order, is not necessary, for it is. 
But organization and ecclesiastical laws are humanly con- 
structed things. They are not the church; for strictly 
speaking, a church, as a thing apart from regenerating 
human souls, is as impossible as heaven would be as a 
thing apart from the angels, in whom it is formed by the 
inflowing of the Divine of the Lord. The church on earth 
is a regenerating humanity. The church ends when, in- 
stead of being regenerated, men remain in the love of 
themselves and the world; and consequently a new church 
is this work of regeneration beginning again in the remnant 
left in the old for the commencement of a new church. 

Thus the Adamic Church ended with the spiritual flood 
it brought upon itself, and the new church, called the An- 
cient Church, commenced with Noah, who stands for all 
the people left in the Adamic Church, who were capable 
of undergoing the new processes of regeneration by which 
alone they could be saved. The spiritual generations or 
nativities of this new church, which arose, are what are 
meant by the generations of Noah; and these were justice, 
uprightness and obedience, or walking with God. 

There is a Divine order observed in these generations of 
the Noetic Church. Justice is the first mentioned, because 
it belongs to the heart life of the church in that it consists 
in the very good of charity. Uprightness is next men- 
tioned, because it has to do with the law and order of 

110 



truth, by which charity is formed and exercised. Lastly, 
walking with God is mentioned, because it stands for the 
principle of obedience in the daily life. These were the 
generations of Noah. 

But these three graces were not existing in a full state 
of development at the time it was said: "Now, Noah found 
grace in the eyes of the Lord." The capacity for them 
existed, as is always the case with the remnant at the end 
of the church; but their development was to be realized in 
a subsequent state of the Ancient Church. We must also 
remember that the people who formed the Ancient Church, 
in the beginning, were the descendants of a corrupted and 
fallen race of the Most Ancient Church. They partook 
of their corruptions and differed from them only in the 
sense of having remaining with them a plane on which 
could be built a spiritual life. It was through deep re- 
generation that the principles denoted by the generations 
of Noah, were so far developed as to be capable of distinct 
presentation to the outlying world. 

Here we reach an important fact. The Adamic Church 
did not include the whole of mankind then existing on the 
earth. There were immense populations who had never 
sustained any vital relations to the Most Ancient Church. 
They were what we would call Gentiles — people in the 
great body of humanity, but outside the church, which 
was the heart and lungs of the whole body of humanity 
then existing. Noah was the remnant in the Most Ancient 
Church. The outlying mass of people, who because they 
were no vital part of the Most Ancient Church, were not 
involved in its moral corruptions, were those in whom the 
religion of the Ancient Church was established. These 
outside people were not all of the same genius. Their 

111 



dispositions were various; each had his own individuality, 
their peculiar bent and capacity of mind. In general they 
constituted three distinct classes. Each class received 
from the teaching of the Noetic Church that which was 
best suited to its genius. Now, let us get a concrete idea 
of all this: The Ancient Church, as we have said, con- 
tained three cardinal principles, called the generations of 
Noah, which were justice, uprightness and obedience. The 
three classes into which the people were divided, who were 
capable of being influenced and saved by these principles 
were called Shem, Ham and Japheth. These are said to 
be the sons of Noah, because they stand for the three 
kinds of people who were reached and brought into the 
Noetic Church. The teaching of the church concerning 
justice, or the doctrine of charity, appealed most strongly 
and was most attractive to the people called Shem; and 
they were brought into the church by it. The teaching 
concerning uprightness, the doctrine that revealed right 
laws of truth and that awakened the understanding to an 
intellectual appreciation of the truth, appealed to, reached 
and brought into the church, the people called Ham. The 
teaching concerning obedience, the doctrine which clearly 
defined one's walk with God, or religion in daily life, at- 
tracted those to the church who are called Japheth. Thus 
Noah, Shem, Ham and Japheth stand, not for individuals, 
but for distinct classes of individuals in whom the Lord 
formed the Ancient Church. This is what the story means. 
By Noah's wife and the wives of his sons, are meant the 
affections with which each class of individuals comprising 
the church received its teaching. All of these were saved 
in the ark, that is, by the church which was built up in 
their minds. The flood came, but they were saved. They 
endured temptations and were purified. 

112 



Think now of the wind that passed over the earth and 
dried up the waters, and you will see that it is used as the 
symbol of the truth. For as a natural wind evaporates 
water, so Divine truth disperses falsities and restores the 
mind to health and vigor. The truth gained daily in its 
power over the minds and lives of these people; like a 
spiritual wind, it dried up the waters of falsity and brought 
to view the landscapes of a new life. The waters receded. 
Ah, but it was through mighty and prolonged struggles 
that this was done. But out of those struggles they were 
brought; and then, in their hearts, there grew up from the 
Lord, a great love for Him and for each other, and for all 
the world. It lifted up their minds; it filled them with 
deep thankfulness; it elevated every phase of their life. 
They had been exposed to great spiritual danger but now 
they felt secure in the great love that had come to them. 
They had struggled; now a sweet rest had come to them. 
How beautifully the Divine allegory tells us of it: "And 
the Ark rested on the mountains of Ararat.' ' What a 
beautiful ending! 



THE RAVEN AND THE DOVE 

In discussing the story of the flood and the ark, we 
have purposely avoided calling attention to the dis- 
crepancies and contradictions and physical impossibilities 
that appear on the surface of the account. These things 
are apparent to all who read the story, and calling attention 
to them would prove a wearisome task as well as a fruitless 
one; and besides it might prove harmful to those who are 
unable to rise to the plane of the spiritual interpretation 
of the story. The New Church does not come to destroy, 
but to fulfill. Its work is constructive not destructive. 

113 



There are many simple-minded Christians in the world; 
and they are unable to bear the inner light of the Lord's 
Word; for which reason they must remain in the shade of 
its letter. As long as they do this, reading the Word 
and understanding it according to its natural sense, but 
with reverent minds the angels, as we are told, " instantan- 
eously evolve the spiritual sense," as such reverent souls 
read it, "and thereby connect them with heaven and con- 
join them with the Lord." This is a beautiful and catho- 
lic teaching. 

But to all who have reached a plane in the development 
of their intellectual life where they must see and have a 
rational basis for faith, all that is necessary to lead them 
to an acknowledgment of the Divinity of the Bible is the 
simple and direct opening of the lessons of its spiritual 
sense. Truth is its own witness. Truth is its own author- 
ity. So of this story. It need only be opened in its 
spiritual sense to be seen and acknowledged by all who 
are prepared for a reasonable faith in revelation. 

A man asked me the other day this question: "Why 
is it that nothing is said about the admission of air into 
the ark?" The ark is the symbol of the church, as it 
was formed in the people of the Noetic age; and it was 
formed in them by the slow process of spiritual regenera- 
tion. The air is wind in a gentle and quiet state and 
is the symbol of the spiritual influences which operate 
to regenerate man. These influences are continually sup- 
plied by the Lord as man Co-operates with Him, but 
no man is openly sensible of them, that is, they 
make no report to his senses. Spiritual life comes 
from moment to moment, but we are not conscious of its 
constant communication. The Lord is the giver of those 

114 



holy and interior spiritual influences. He secretly, and 
in a manner wholly unknown to us, supplies the regenera- 
tive life. No man can do this. It was to represent this 
great fact that in this allegory nothing is said of Noah 
making provision for the airing of the ark. Here, then 
is the answer. 

And the other question which doubtless has occurred 
to many: "Why were the two lower stories of the ark 
left in darkness? There was only one window, and that 
was in the top of the ark." Look within for the answer. 
The ark tossed on the waters! Don't you see that it is 
the picture of the people, in whom the church was being 
formed, undergoing severe trial and temptation? What 
of a state of deep spiritual temptation? In such a state 
of trial, are not the lower stories of the mind — the faculties 
that pertain to the merely natural and rational depart- 
ments of the soul, in a state of darkness? Evil and false 
influences are operating upon them and the light of heaven 
is, for the time being, shut out. Who has not experienced 
this? At such times, the lower parts of the mind lose 
entirely their hold on religion. They are in darkness. 
But there is a window above in the ark. It is the intellect- 
ual faculty belonging to the spiritual mind. Light enters 
there; so that while in a state of temptation, the lower and 
more external planes of the mind are in darkness, light 
shines in the interior regions of the soul. If this were 
not true, no one could do otherwise than fall in temptation. 
But of the flowing in of this interior light, man is wholly 
unconscious, when in a state of temptation. While the 
trial lasts even this window seems shut. But when the 
temptation ends, this seemingly closed window appears 
open again to the spiritual consciousness. This is what is 

115 



meant where it is said: "At the end of forty days, Noah 
opened the window of the ark which he had made/' 

The number forty stands for a full state of trial and 
temptation. When this passes away, the window — the 
interiors of the mind — opens and one is made conscious 
of the loving hand that upheld and guided the soul in the 
hour of temptation. This is true of the individual; and 
it was true of the collective man represented by Noah in the 
ark. Think now of the sending forth of the raven. The 
raven, unlike the dove, was not, in this allegory, sent forth 
to see if the waters were dried up. It was sent forth as a 
thing to be gotten rid of. The raven is a black and vora- 
cious bird, and it therefore symbolizes a false principle in 
the understanding. The raven in the ark! Don't you 
see that it denoted a false idea that adhered to the minds 
of the Noetic people, which was disclosed to them, when, 
after temptation, the spiritual part of their minds was 
illumined by the Divine truth? 

Truth is spiritual light; and when this light shines in 
the mind it reveals falsity in all its horrid blackness and 
there comes an effort to expel it. This is what is meant 
by Noah sending forth the raven. But the raven did 
not go away at once. True it never got back into the 
Ark again; but it did go "to and fro." It flew away and 
then came back; and it continued to do this until finally 
it disappeared forever. Almost without being told, one 
sees what this means. 

Take your own experience. Most of you have come 
to the new church from the denominational bodies. You 
were taught the old dogmas. You thought of God as exist- 
ing in three Divine persons; of the atonement as the placat- 
ing of Divine wrath by the death of Christ and of salva- 

116 



tion by faith alone. What are these dogmas but ravens? 
You have learned to think of Jesus Christ as God in a 
Divine Humanity in whom is the Divine trinity of Father, 
Son and Holy Ghost as Divine essentials; you have learn- 
ed to think of the atonement as man's union with the 
Lord. You have learned to think of salvation as the 
Lord's deliverance of your souls from sin and its power. 
In this way the Lord is forming His New Church in you. 
You have undergone much trial in the reception of the 
doctrines of the Lord's new advent. You have come 
out of it. Light has come. You see the raven-the false 
doctrine of the consummated church on these subjects, 
and you have sent it forth out of the ark. Let me 
ask you — did it go forth never to bother you again? 
Did it not go "to and fro"? The old ideas come back, 
you are distressed by them at times. One of you said 
to me: "If I could stay in church all the time I could 
shut out the old doctrine I was taught about God, but 
when I go home it comes back to me." This is what is 
meant by the raven going "to and fro" But we who 
have come into the New Church, if we are faithful, will 
see the raven go for good, never to return again. Now 
such was the experience of the people in whom the Lord 
formed the Ancient Church. They did not free their minds 
of false things suddenly. The raven, when sent forth from 
the ark, went "to and fro" for a long time. But finally 
it disappeared never to return again. The truth finally 
expelled it forever. 

And then a new experience came to them. It is told 
us in the beautiful parable of sending forth the dove. 
The dove was sent forth to see if the waters had dried up. 
That was its mission. The dove represents the truth. 

117 



But the truth is from the Lord; and to be effective, must 
be done in the acknowledgment of Him as its author. 
In the beginning of regeneration, man is not in this acknowl- 
edgment. He acts from his selfhood. He believes he has 
discovered the truth and that he has the power to execute 
its commands. This, in the beginning, was the state of 
the Noetic people. Thus is is said: "Noah sent forth the 
dove from himself." It found no place for the "sole 
of its foot." How could it? Truth believed and done 
from oneself has no power to change life. The dove came 
back and Noah pulled it into the ark, — so runs the story. 
There is still here the idea of a mental ownership of the 
truth — still, the thought that one is doing good of himself . 
The raven has gone, — falsity is expelled, but the dove of 
truth has not attained to full liberty of life. 

It is sent forth again, and again it comes back to be 
taken into the ark, but it brings back an olive leaf! How 
beautiful this symbolism is! The olive tree, from which 
the holy oil was derived, is the symbol of the perception 
of the indwelling of the Divine love; and the olive leaf 
symbolizes the truth of the awakening of that love in 
man's heart. This had become, by this time, the spiritual 
state of the people of the Ancient Church. 

Upon this return of the dove, it was not pulled into the 
ark. The selfhood was finding its true place; the Lord 
was being acknowledged. 

The third time the dove was sent forth, it did not return. 
The waters had dried up and it found a place for the 
"sole of its foot.' 1 By the dove finding a place for the 
"sole of her foot" is meant that the truth found a resting 
place in the hearts of the people. It disappeared as 
truth in the forms of goodness which it produced. 

118 



THE BOW IN THE CLOUD 

In the Divine allegory we are considering, the ark is said 
to have rested on the mountain ; and when the waters were 
fully abated, Noah is said to have uncovered the ark. Then 
God is said to have commanded Noah and his sons to leave 
the ark, bringing with them the living creatures they had 
taken into it. It is then said that Noah built an altar 
unto the Lord and offered unto the Lord an offering of 
every clean beast and of every clean fowl. After this 
offering, the Lord is described as establishing a covenant 
with Noah and every living creature of all flesh. The 
token of that covenant was a bow in the cloud. "I do 
set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a 
covenant between me and the earth." 

Noah and his family were not so many individuals. They 
stand for the great spiritual church which was forming in 
the world. This church had passed through trying ordeals; 
it had suffered bitter trials and temptations; but now rest 
had come, the waters of turmoil and strife had abated, and 
the church was in a state of peace. Coming out of these 
great temptations, the minds of the Noetic people were 
clearer on all spiritual subjects. Things that had been in 
a state of obscurity to them, were now openly seen. This 
is what is meant by Noah uncovering the ark. Out of this 
brighter and better state, that had come as the result of 
their trial faithfully borne, there arose in their hearts a 
sense of deep thankfulness to the Lord for His Divine pro- 
tection in the time of their danger and a desire to express 
that holy sentiment in the genuine worship of the Lord. 
In the allegory, this is portrayed in these simple words: 
"And Noah builded an altar unto the Lord; and took of 

119 



every clean beast and every clean fowl, and offered burnt 
offerings on the altar." 

The things mentioned, such as the altar, clean beasts and 
birds and the burnt offering stand in the allegory for the 
affections in the hearts and for the thoughts in the under- 
standings of the people of the Noetic Church; for at the 
period of the Ancient Church that is here described, the 
people were not external enough to call for the actual 
killing of animals in sacrifice. That practice arose later 
when worship among them became sensualized. The clean 
beasts and birds that Noah is said to have taken into the 
ark were not natural animals; they were the clean affec- 
tions, the clean thoughts of the people who were being 
formed into a new church ; and they were called beasts and 
birds because beasts and birds fitly represented them. 

Uncovering the ark and coming out of it, the altar that 
was built unto the Lord was the high state of love that was 
formed in their hearts. The altar was within them — the 
altar of a pure and consecrated heart. So of the beasts 
and birds — they were the good affections and thoughts of 
their regenerated wills and understandings. In other 
words, their internal worship is described by external acts 
and objects that represent it. 

It was after this state of freedom in worship was formed 
in the members of the Ancient Church, that we read of the 
bow that was set in the cloud as the token of the Lord's 
covenant with them. Perhaps some of us remember when 
we thought of this bow in the cloud as the creation and 
first appearance of the rainbow. We know better now; for 
the bow in the cloud is a natural phenomenon and is always 
caused by the shining of the sun through the drops of 
descending rain. It was not a new creation in the day of 

120 



Noah. For such a phenomenon has always appeared 
whenever the proper physical conditions were furnished. 

And then , the word set does not imply to create or make 
for the first time. It rather conveys the idea of appoint- 
ment or establishment. What had been a well-known and 
beautiful appearance — a thing so frequently seen — was 
now appealed to, set apart and dedicated as a token and 
symbol of the establishment of a covenant between the 
Lord and man. 

A covenant is a conjunction or union of two parties; so 
that a covenant between God and man means a coming 
together — a living, vital and personal relationship between 
the Divine Creator and His human and responsible crea- 
tures; and the natural object used as the symbol of that 
personal relationship must perfectly represent it. The 
rainbow does this in the most perfect way. 

From the earliest times, the typical character of the bow 
in the cloud has been recognized. The early Rabbinical 
writings traced the resemblance of the bow to the Hebrew 
letter caph and supposed it to be a token of certain remark- 
able events in the civil history of the Jewish people. It 
was regarded as a sign among the ancient Greeks and was 
called Iris. In the Greek mythology the office assigned to 
Iris was to cut the thread which was supposed to hold the 
soul in the body of those who were dying. Here we see a 
little hint of the covenant of which Iris was supposed to be 
the token. She removed out of the way the thing that 
prevented the soul's union with God. This, like many 
other ideas in the Greek mythology, was derived from the 
correspondences of natural things to spiritual — a know- 
ledge which had come down from the time of the Ancient 
Church. 

121 



The early Christian Fathers, especially Origen and Ter- 
tullian, regarded the bow in the cloud as the symbol of the 
covenant of grace which came with the incarnation of the 
Logos. In relation to the Noetic Church, the bow had a 
twofold meaning. (1) It represented the spiritual sense 
of the Divine Word which was revealed to the Ancient 
Church. For we must remember that the Ancient Word, 
by which that church was instituted and established in 
the world, had its cloud or letter. The literal sense of the 
Ancient Word was formed from the carefully preserved 
correspondences, through the ministry of the Enochites, 
of the Most Ancient Church. These correspondences were 
more remote than the correspondences of the literal sense 
of the Hebrew Scriptures. They formed a letter of a 
revelation which treated only of spiritual things. This 
letter of the Ancient Word was the cloud and the spiritual 
sense within that letter, which treated of the Lord and the 
regeneration of man, was the beautiful bow set in that 
cloud. Thus to the Ancient Church, the bow set in the 
cloud, was the token of the covenant which God made 
with that church by means of the outward revelation of 
truth in a Divinely given book of Scripture. Thus the 
rainbow, which is distinguished by a series of harmonious 
colors, was the symbol of spiritual truths within the letter 
of the Ancient Word. These spiritual truths in all their 
variegations were the real token of the covenant which 
God made with the Ancient Church. 

(2) The bow, as it respects the man of the Ancient 
Church, or those who by the work of regeneration were 
having the principles of the church implanted in their 
minds, represented the perception of the spiritual sense 
of their Scripture. As the Word has its cloud, or letter, 

122 



in which the spiritual sense appears as a bow, so the re- 
generating man has his cloud — a natural mind, with its 
obscure perceptions of spiritual truth. The best of men 
have dark and cloudy states; but in this cloud God sets 
His bow of promise and covenant. For in our darkest 
hours there is present some perception of spiritual things 
that spans the cloud. So of the people among whom the 
Lord formed the Ancient Church. They had their dark 
background, their heredity from the long ago, their ob- 
scure states; but because of the separation of will and 
understanding in them, they had perceptions of spiritual 
truth. These were their bow of promise. These percep- 
tions of spiritual things kept them in touch with the Lord. 
A new will of obedience could be formed in their separated 
and elevated understandings and thus a covenant be es- 
tablished between God and themselves. They could learn 
His will and do it. They could be conjoined to Him. This 
faculty would preserve them from the dreadful evils and 
falsities which inundated and destroyed the Most Ancient 
Church. 

And so it is also with us. Our Bible has its cloud, it s 
letter, and it also has its bow or spiritual sense, and is 
therefore God's covenant with us. And the man of the 
New Church has his cloud of naturalism, his dark side; but 
going on to know the Lord, he also has his beautiful bow 
of spiritual perceptions. This bow spans his mind. One 
end of it rests on his natural mind and arching his being, 
the other end rests on his spiritual mind. What a beautiful 
bow! Yes, and it is the promise that in the end the two 
minds in him will be harmonized and act as one. 

123 



NOAH'S VINEYARD: HIS DRUNKENNESS AND 

HIS EXPOSURE 

The Most Ancient, or Adamic Church, was celestial, but 
the Ancient, or Noetic Church, was spiritual. These two 
terms, celestial and spiritual, indicate and point out differ- 
ences and distinctions that are organic and far reaching. 
The celestial church was in the goodness of love; the 
spiritual church was in the truths of faith. This means 
that the man of the Most Ancient Church derived truth 
from good, and that the man of the Ancient Church de- 
rived good from truth. The will and the understanding 
of the celestial man acted as one faculty, the understanding 
being formed from the will and thinking always as the will 
loved. The will and understanding in the spiritual man 
were separated, they were not one falculty but two; and 
because of the corruptions of his will, a new will was 
formed in his intellectual part, in which a distinctly spiritual 
life was implanted, to be formed and guided by the truth 
which from revelation entered his understanding from 
, without. Such was the organic difference between the 
two churches. 

The imagry of the Divine Allegory clearly points to 
this difference. Adam was placed in a garden, Noah planted 
a vineyard. Adam fell through eating, Noah fell through 
drinking. Eating is an act which indicates a state of the 
will; drinking is an act which describes a state of the un- 
derstanding. The Adamic people, by listening to the 
pleading of the sense-life, fell away from the purity of 
love. The Noetic people, by the inflation of self-intelli- 
gence, fell away from the purity of truth. Adam's fall 
took place in a garden; Noah's fall took place in a vineyard. 
It would be interesting to follow up and dwell upon these 

124 



correspondences, but enough has been said to indicate and 
fix the spiritual meaning in our minds. 

We have seen that the ark resting on the mountain is 
the beautiful picture the Lord gives us of the Ancient 
Church resting in the heights and quiet of the Divine love 
after its long state of trial and temptation. The waters 
of temptations have abated. The dry ground appears. 
And, now, we come to a very remarkable statement, one 
that, in its spiritual meaning, reveals the first step in the 
spiritual decline of the Noetic Church. We read: "And 
Noah began to be an husbandman; and he planted a vine- 
yard." Now the original Hebrew words, ish adamah, 
which in the Authorized Version of the Bible are trans- 
lated, husbandman, more literally means a man of the 
ground. This changes the entire sense and brings out 
more clearly the spiritual meaning. The ground referred 
to is the external mind; and the spiritual sense reads as 
follows: "And the Ancient Church began to be external," 
that was just the very thing that happened to the Noetic 
Church. The literal picture of Noah coming down from 
the summit of the mountain and planting a vineyard in 
the plain, describes how the people of the Ancient Church 
began to be external — men of the ground — how they de- 
scended from the mountain heights of love to the Lord and 
their neighbor into the more external things of the church ; 
how they began to cultivate them, to give undue import- 
ance to them and finally to prefer and exalt them above the 
internal and spiritual things of the church. This is what 
is meant by the words: "And Noah began to be a man of 
the ground." Here was the beginning of the fall of the 
Ancient Church. It began to be a church of the ground — 
to look down and out instead of looking up and within, 

125 



There is always danger ahead of any church that begins to 
do this. Externals of worship, the rituals of religion, are 
not the church; they are not religion. They have a very 
important place and serve a very high use in the church, 
but if they are allowed to absorb the thought, if they are 
taken out of their subordinate position and given undue 
prominence, nothing other than a decline of spiritual life 
can result. I sound this note of warning that the new 
Church may be kept from an undue regard for the things 
that merely please the eye and ear. The Church is an 
internal spiritual life, and its ceremonies and ritual are 
mere clothing and nothing more. 

Beginning to be a man of the ground, the allegory goes 
on to tell us that Noah planted a vineyard. Of the Garden 
of Adam, it is said: "And the Lord God planted a garden 
eastward in Eden." The garden in Eden was planted by 
the Lord, but the vineyard of Ararat was planted by Noah. 

Here is brought out an important spiritual teaching. The 
planting of this vineyard was one more step in the decline 
of the Noetic Church; for it represents the establishment 
of a church that partook more of the mere external things 
of truth and doctrine than of love and the life of charity. 
This was really the case. For as the Ancient Church 
declined, it began to give loud utterance to the things of 
mere faith and to pay less and less attention to the life of 
charity. It finally became a church of the ground. 

The Lord in the Word uses a vineyard to represent the 
church, but He is also said to plant it. In the parable, 
the householder who planted a vineyard and let it out to 
husbandmen is the Lord Himself who plants His church 
and lets it out to us; but here, Noah plants the vineyard. 
And Noah having become a man of the ground, could 

126 



plant nothing more than a church in mere externals — a 
church in which the mere knowledge of the truth was re- 
garded as the chief virtue and charity of life as an inferior 
quality. This is the dreadful thing that happens when 
man attempts to place the essentials of the church in mere 
faith — things of mere doctrine. 

We come now to Noah's intoxication: Wine is the sym- 
bol of spiritual truth. For this reason, the Lord used wine 
in the institution of the Holy Supper. The Lord estab- 
lished the Christian Church as His spiritual vineyard; and 
the spiritual truths which He reveals to it are the wine of 
the vineyard. The opening of the minds of men to Chris- 
tian teaching and instruction is spiritually to drink of the 
wine of the vineyard of the Lord's planting; but in receiv- 
ing Christian teaching and in imparting it, we must remem- 
ber whose vineyard the church is and from whom the wine 
of spiritual truth is derived. Every movement of self- 
intelligence must be quelled — all pride of intellect must 
be shunned as sin against God. If these evils are not 
shunned, we are sure to fall into errors that will confuse 
and bewilder our judgment and lead our intellects astray. 
This state is described in the Bible as spiritual drunken- 
ness. 

Here we find the meaning of Noah's intoxication. His 
sin was not that of natural inebriety. There are other 
forms of intoxication than the one produced by the ex- 
cessive use of wine. We often indicate certain states of 
mind by the term intoxication. We say of an enthusiast 
that he is intoxicated with an undue zeal for the cause he 
is advocating. The wordly mind is often intoxicated with 
the success which attends its efforts and achievements. 
The Bible frequently speaks of drunkenness to denote a 

127 



state of spiritual pride. Ariel is said by the prophet Isaiah 
to be drunk. He says: "They are drunken but not with 
wine; they stagger, but not with strong drink. " Again he 
says: "The crown of pride, the drunkards of Ephraim shall 
be trodden down.' So we come to see that the story of 
Noah's drunkenness, considered spiritually, is the descrip- 
tion of the state into which the Ancient Church fell when 
it began to pervert and falsify the truths that were revealed 
to it. The people of that Church became sottish, intoxi- 
cated with the passion for mere truth separate from the life 
it taught, they laid in a state of spiritual stupor. This is 
what is meant by Noah being drunken with the wine of his 
vineyard. 

Think now of Noah's exposure. He lay uncovered in 
his tent. The first consequence which followed Adam's 
sin was that he discovered he was naked. Here, Noah 
lies uncovered. Adam seeing his own nakedness is the 
symbol-way of telling us of the revelation to the conscious- 
ness of the Most Ancient Church of the loss of the inno- 
cence which it possessed in the beginning of its career. 
So of Noah. His nakedness was the coming to the surface 
of the inward guilt into which the Ancient Church had 
fallen. 



THE SIN OF HAM: THE CURSE ON CANAAN 

The letter of this story of Noah's drunkenness and 
his exposure by Ham, and the charitable treatment he 
met with at the hands of Shem and Japheth, is the relation 
of a domestic incident — a Divine picture, designed to 
convey to us the most important lessons. It is a domestic 
parable. 

128 



By Noah, as we have seen, is denoted the Ancient 
Church. His drunkenness symbolizes the errors into which 
that church fell, when it departed from its high principles 
and began to cultivate religion, as a mere philosophy of 
doctrine. To do this is to become spiritually intoxicated. 
This is what is meant by Noah's drunkenness. He 
became drunk with the wine of his own vineyard. 
Self intelligence had found its way into the church; 
and following the dictate of self intelligence led the 
church into all manner of errors. Noah laid drunk 
in his tent. Revelation from the Lord is the only safe- 
guard of the church, for no church can guide itself into 
anything but errors. This statement applies to the modern 
church as truly as it applies to the Ancient Church. The 
very moment any church begins to turn away from the 
plain declarations of the revelation by which it is founded, 
to its own intelligence, it becomes inebriated with the wine 
of his own vineyard. This has been realized in the history 
of the Christian Church. The early Christian Church — 
the church of the Apostolic age, accepted the Lord's guid- 
ance in His Word and had spiritual power and intelli- 
gence from Him. But as that age of the church closed, 
the Christological and Trinitarian controversies arose; and 
the age of the councils marks a long period of spiritual 
inebriation. Noah, again, lay uncovered in his tent. And 
it was all due to self intelligence. Noah's drunkenness 
was this very thing — the fall through self intelligence, of 
the Ancient Church into all mannerof erroneous persuasions. 
And his being uncovered in his tent is only the symbolic 
way of describing the shame and disgrace to which those 
errors and false persuasions exposed the Ancient Church. 
Has not the same thing happened in the history of the 

129 



Christian Church? Have not the formulations of the 
councils — the cruel and debasing doctrines of the Post 
Nicene Church, been a disgrace and a scandal to Christian- 
ity? Could a sober church ever invent the doctrine of 
the tripersonality of God, the vicarious atonement, salva- 
tion by faith alone, predestination, infant damnation, and 
a hell of everlasting burning? Truly, any sober-minded 
man is able to see that those doctrines have exposed the 
church's shame to the gaze of the world. This, only on 
another plane and in a different form, was Noah uncovered 
in his tent, the Ancient Church disgraced by the errors 
which resulted from its own intelligence. 

The sons of Noah are not to be thought of as individ- 
uals. They stand for the three classes of principles which 
entered into the constitution of the Ancient Church; and 
also for the three classes of persons by whom they were 
embraced. 

Shem stands for those who placed the worship of the 
Lord in the foreground — who regarded it as the first 
principle of the church. They, however, did not attach 
much importance to the element of spiritual intelligence 
in directing and forming that worship. They were not 
doctrinal people; nor did they see the importance of true 
doctrine as a qualifying factor in their worship of the 
Lord. 

Japheth stands for those who were in simple obedience 
to the laws which commanded the life, and inculcated 
the moralities of religion. To them, this was the princi- 
pal requirement of religion. But they saw no necessary 
connection of the moralities of religion with the good and 
the truth of God, from which all the outward moralities 
and utilities of life must get their true inwardness. 

130 



Ham stands for those who accepted and received the 
truths of religion, because of the light they afforded to 
their understandings — for the worldly advantage they 
derived from them. They had only a scanty regard for 
the good in which they originated — for the high spiritual 
use they were designed to serve. 

Now, the people called Ham, soon began to fall away 
from truths of the church. Regarding the love of good- 
ness and obedience from interior and spiritual motives, 
as inferior to the cultivation of mere knowledge, their 
truth soon lost all connection in their minds with its 
Divine origin in revelation, and soon failed to see any 
real connection between knowledge and conduct. 

Here we see a law, which is this: Spiritual truth, if it 
is not connected in the mind with its source in God and 
revelation, is soon turned into intellectual speculation. 
This leads to a separation of religion from life. This 
being the genius of the Hamites, therefore Ham is said to 
be the one who exposed Noah; for it was a part of their 
disposition to detect every fault or error which was mani- 
fested. 

The Hamites were the rationalists of the Ancient Church. 
They were quick to observe every discrepancy and to 
hold it up, and speak of it. This they did, with no in- 
tention of correcting error, but only to expose it to the 
gaze of others. 

The people of the ancient Church denoted by Shem 
and Japheth, acted differently. They were in simple, 
good and obedience; thus they endeavored to excuse the 
errors that had made an entrance into the church — to 
put upon them, a favorable construction. This effort of 

131 



the charitable people of the church to protect it from 
scandal is represented by Shem and Japheth covering 
Noah with a garment. Their disinclination to give publi- 
city to the errors that were reported of the church is what 
is meant by their turning their eyes away from their 
father's nakedness and going backward as they covered 
him in his tent. Here is a great lesson in charity; and 
there is ample room and opportunity for the practice of 
it in our own day and in our own church. 

"Noah awoke from his wine." What does this mean? 
It means that the Ancient Church awoke to a sense of 
the dreadful error into which it had fallen. The church 
is the larger man; and as an individual may make a mis- 
take and afterwards come to see it, so the church may 
fall into errors of interpretation, and afterward awake to 
a full sense of the nature and consequence of such errors. 
This was true of the Ancient Church. "Noah awoke 
from his wine." 

When Noah awoke, we are told that, "he knew what 
his younger son had done unto him." This is strange 
language; and it is impossible to think of it only in a 
figurative sense; for Ham, according to the literal sense, 
was Noah's second, and not his younger son. The awaken- 
ing of Noah was the Ancient Church seeing the errors 
into which it had fallen ; and Noah seeing what his younger 
son had done unto him was the parable way of telling us 
that the church perceived the fact that the Hamites — the 
people of mere knowledge, had founded a corrupt wor- 
ship on the very errors that they had detected. 

That corrupt worship had arisen during Noah's state 
of intoxication. He saw it when he awoke. The people 
who adopted such worship and made it their religion, 

132 



are called Canaan; and they are spoken of as 
Noah's younger son, because they adopted and carried 
into practice the religious corruptions which had last 
descended from the Ancient Church. Canaan, thus re- 
presented the last and youngest heretical worship that 
descended from the declining Ancient Church. In the 
story, Ham is called the father of Canaan. This means 
that from the Hamitish branch of the Ancient Church, 
which had perverted the Divine truth, there was begotten 
a new corruption which is here called Canaan. 

Here we see why the curse for exposing Noah's naked- 
ness was pronounced against Canaan and not upon Ham. 
The curse upon Canaan means that the people, under 
that name, who had adopted such corrupt worship, turned 
themselves away from the Lord and closed all the avenues 
of Divine influx against the life of heaven. This curse — 
this closure of the minds of the Canaanites to the Lord, 
was fully realized in their history as a people; for it was 
this people with their corrupt worship that were long 
afterwards destroyed by the Jews when they came into 
possess the land of Canaan. 

THE GENERATIONS OF SHEM, HAM AND 

JAPHETH 

The sons of Noah were the distinct religious branches of 
the Ancient Church. Think of Noah, not as an individual, 
but as the Ancient or Spiritual Church, and there will 
be no difficulty attending this spiritual interpretation. 
The name Noah stands for the remnant, left in the Most 
Ancient Church, in all of whom the Lord commenced a 
different process of regeneration — a regeneration which 

133 



consisted in the forming of a new will in their intellectual 
parts. Shem, Ham and Japheth denote not only the three 
cardinal principles of the Ancient Church, but the different 
classes of people who accepted them and by loyalty to 
them propagated them among mankind. 

We may find an illustration of this in the history of the 
Christian Church. That church, as early as the second 
century, was called the Catholic Church. It was so called 
because to the early Fathers the word catholic expressed 
the true conception of Christianity as the universal re- 
ligion, differing from the ethnic or race religions in this: 
that it brought to the world a religion for all sorts and 
conditions of men. But, after the first general council in 
325 A. D., the original Catholic Church began to depart 
from the faith once delivered unto the saints, and branched 
out into three parts, which church history calls the Roman, 
the Greek and the Anglican Catholic Churches. The 
Roman, Greek and Anglican Churches are the three sons 
of the original Christian Catholic Church. Each distinct 
branch retained something of the parent church, but each 
departed in many particulars from the original church. 

So it was of the sons of Noah. Shem was the branch 
that received and accentuated the doctrine of charity. 
Ham was the branch of the church that received in a 
special way the doctrine that revealed the laws of the 
Divine truth. Japheth was the branch of the church that 
received and laid especial stress upon the doctrine of 
obedience. Starting out, in this way, these three branches 
of the Noetic Church began to propagate the special 
things they stood for. As they did this, there arose 
among their members many and various opinions concern- 

134 



ing the principles for which they stood, especially as to the 
methods of propagating them. 

Thus the descendants of Shem, Ham and Japheth are 
not to be understood as individuals but as forms of belief, 
and their names as indicating the people who embraced 
them. This is all clear enough if we keep in mind the 
doctrine that we are reading about the spiritual history of 
the church and not about the natural population of the 
world. 

The number which descended from the three sons of 
Noah is seventy. This number is very significant, for, like 
seven, it stands for what is full and complete. We get 
from it, spiritually understood, the idea of the full develop- 
ment of the principles derived from the three cardinal 
teachings of the Ancient Church. One thing, however, 
we must keep in mind — the Noetic Church was in the 
process of decline. The descendants of Shem, Ham and 
Japheth — the beliefs that were originated and propagated 
in these branches of the Noetic Church, were getting far- 
ther and farther away from the original deposit of the true 
faith — the church in its three branches was going on to its 
judgment and end. The number seventy — the number of 
the descendants of the three sons — stands for this con- 
summation and end. 

Thus it is not the origin of the inhabitants of the lands, 
but the origin and character of the religious doctrine and 
ritual which prevailed among men in those ancient times 
that this record deals with. 

Here we meet with a remarkable statement. After the 
descendants of Japheth are enumerated, it is said: "By 
these were the isles of the Gentiles divided in their lands." 

135 



Here we see that Gentiles — that is, people outside of the 
church — were already in existence — showing in the very 
letter of the story that the record is not treating of the 
natural history of man. The lands were already full of 
inhabitants, but as the teaching of the Ancient Church, in 
its three great branches, was brought to them, they were 
divided in their lands — distinguished in their lands by the 
several notions of religion which began to prevail among 
them. Think of this same thing as realized in the pro- 
pagation of Christianity. The first Christian Church was 
organized in Jerusalem and was under the pastoral care 
of St. James. From it as a center, Christianity was 
planted in the Holy Land. Missionaries went forth pro- 
claiming its doctrine; and they begat, as spiritual sons, all 
the nations of western Europe. They were not the colon- 
izers of those countries, but they were the ones who con- 
verted their inhabitants. Europe became Christian; but 
each nation has been distinguished by some peculiar feature 
of Christianity. The people were divided in their lands. 
So of this Noetic Church, the various nations that were in- 
fluenced by the doctrines of the Ancient Church — the dis- 
tinct forms of religious life that were developed among 
them — are what is meant by the Gentiles being divided in 
their lands. The respective receivers of the various doc- 
trines of the Ancient Church in course of time separated 
and propagated their opinions; and the names of their 
religious characteristics were fixed upon the nations that 
received them. 

One may ask how so many nations could have been so 
distinctly characterized by religion; but we have had the 
same thing in the history of Christianity and Moham- 
medanism. Stanley, in his History of the Eastern Church, 

136 



gives the description of a whole family of national churches 
springing from and being related to the original Greek 
Church. 

So the Divine purpose in the list of names of nations 
descended from Shem, Ham and Japheth is to express the 
origin and character of the various religious sentiments 
which sprang out of the three families of doctrine which 
grew up in the Noetic Church, and which, in the allegory, 
are called Shem, Ham and Japheth. The purpose was 
also to indicate the propagations of those varieties of doc- 
trine and worship among the nations and their adoption 
of the names by which those religious teachings were 
expressed. We have the same thing to-day. Rome, from 
its religion, is called Papal. The Papal nations are they 
among whom the Romish religion is established. Turkey 
is called Mohammedan; and Islamism, or the Islam na- 
tions, are they among whom the religion of Mohamed is 
established. But the early Christian missionaries did not 
originate the inhabitants of Italy; nor did Mohamed 
originate the inhabitants of Turkey. But the Christian 
missionaries gave a religion to Italy, and Mohamed gave 
a religion to Turkey; and in accepting the religion they 
adopted the name. We can see from this how various 
were the forms of religious belief and worship in the An- 
cient Church; and each of these beliefs was adopted by 
certain numbers of individuals, who, as a family, a house, 
or a nation, was called by the name of the special religious 
doctrine that they accepted. 

Thus we have three lines: The nations descended from 
Shem stand for the peoples who accepted the doctrines 
concerning goodness of life, which they derived from those 
of the Ancient Church who were in spiritual and internal 

137 



worship. These doctrines gave a distinct character to the 
people that accepted them. They took the name of the 
doctrine; so that the nations descended from Shem are 
the people whose religious characteristics may be traced 
back to the distinctive religious teaching in the Ancient 
Church that was personified under the name Shem. The 
true evidence of Shemitic origin was their religious charac- 
teristics and not their descent from an individual called 
Shem. 

The sons of Ham stand for doctrines which were derived 
from those in the Ancient Church, among whom there had 
prevailed a corrupt form of internal worship. They also 
stand for the nation by which the knowledge of such doc- 
trines were received. Thus the sons of Ham denote the 
doctrines and the people who placed the knowledge of 
religion, and especially the mere ritual of the church, above 
the principles of the church and the life of charity. The 
nations that embraced these doctrines were called by the 
name which was given to that doctrine in the Ancient 
Church. It is the spiritual generation of these doctrines 
and not nations that is told us in the allegory. 

Those who are described as the sons of Japheth stand 
for doctrines that were evolved from those in the Ancient 
Church who, in the beginning, held true views of external 
worship and for the communities and nations that adopted 
them. When we contemplate a nation, we think of it as 
one. There is a national character, and this national 
character gives a peculiar quality to the religion that 
prevails in it. But the inward quality of religion differs, 
because of its inward reception into different minds in the 
nation. So all the nations said to be descended from 
Japheth symbolize the different inward reception of the 

138 



doctrines that were . evolved from the original teaching in 
the Ancient Church which was personified by the name 
Japheth. 

Thus it is of the descent and propagation of religious 
doctrines and forms of worship that is told us in the story 
of the generations of the three sons -of Noah. 

NIMROD AND THE BEGINNING OF HIS 

KINGDOM 

Nimrod was descended from Ham. By Ham was re- 
presented the doctrine of external worship, in which there 
was, in the beginning, a true internal spirit. But in the 
process of the decline of the Ancient Church, external 
worship was separated from true internal worship, and 
was adopted by large communities of people. Nimrod 
was the name given to the doctrine which grew out of the 
Hamitic branch of the Ancient Church, which centered 
the all of religion in mere external observances. He does 
not, therefore, stand for an individual, but for a doctrine 
and for the communities that adopted and were influenced 
in their religious life by it. 

External worship separate from internal worship is 
profane. It consists in mere formalities and rituals. 
This kind of worship is soulless. It is sheer idolatry. 
It is paying tithe of mint and anise and cummin, but 
omitting the weightier matters of the law, judgment, 
mercy and faith. It makes the formal the essential 
and places the body above the soul. It appeals to and 
captivates the senses but does not reach the heart and 
mind. It is really a ceremonial tyranny and sets aside, 
as of little importance, the real inward spirit of religion. 
It is a dead and cold formalism. 

139 



All this is true of any form of worship, be it elaborate 
or simple, in which there is lacking the spirit of faith and 
true humility. The church is constituted of many var- 
ieties of mind; and a true and living church can never be 
cast into one mold of worship. Internal worship consists 
in love to the Lord and charity toward the neighbor, and 
this internal worship can enter into and dwell in all manner 
and forms of external worship. It is the essential, and if 
the members of the church are in this internal worship, 
their forms of external worship may be elaborate and 
ritualistic, or they may be as simple as the forms of Quaker- 
ism, and they will be acceptable unto the Lord. The 
internal is what the Lord sees. The attempt to force one 
external form of worship upon the whole church indicates 
an utter failure to see and be governed by the principle 
of charity. And this is just as true of those who seek to 
force what they call the simple forms of worship upon the 
whole church as it is of those who seek to force the more 
ornate and ritualistic forms. There is just as much 
danger in the one as there is in the other. 

The main thing is to have the internal right in the 
sight of God; and then the ceremonials of the church 
become matters of dress, to be determined by the needs or 
taste of the people. This is the only broad and catholic 
view. 

Now the Nimrod doctrine did not involve this great 
conception. It ignored the internal altogether and placed 
the whole worship in mere ceremonial. This doctrine 
reached its height of power as the Ancient Church approach- 
ed its judgment and end. Indeed it is remarkable that 
each dispensation of the church has experienced, at its 
close, this same thing. As the Adamic Church neared 

140 



its end, there arose in it an externalism represented by the 
giants who became mighty in the earth. As the Ancient 
Church was coming to its end, Nimrod arose — there grew 
up a worship that was wholly external. When the historic 
Jewish Church was at its end there arose the same state 
as represented in the Pharisees, who bound heavy burdens 
and grievous to be borne and laid them on men's shoulders, 
And at the end of the church of the Load's first advent, 
we find the real spirit of worship eliminated and a most 
gorgeous ceremonial worship established. The meaning 
of all this is clear enough to one who thinks. When the real 
inward life of the church dies out, the priesthood seek to 
make good the loss by the establishment of awe striking 
ceremonials. This is the state of the Ancient Church that 
is represented by Nimrod. 

Think of what is said of Nimrod: "He became a mighty 
one in the earth." This is not the story of the rise of a 
man with a mighty and commanding influence. It is 
rather the story of the rise of a perverted and utterly 
false doctrine that grew into favor among men and came 
to be regarded as a mighty power in the Ancient Church. 

The earth, or world, is the symbol of the church; and 
the story is that of a doctrine that became prominent in 
its sway and that was mighty in its influence. The Ancient 
Church had grown to be external. Its spiritual life had 
waned and died, and here was a doctrine of external wor- 
ship that strongly appealed to the natural state of mind 
into which men had descended. Their natural hearts 
embraced it eagerly. It made no demands upon their 
life, for they had put away the vital things of faith and 
life and had come to regard the mere formalities of the 
church as having saving power. Descending into this 

141 



condition, the church readily turned to a doctrine that 
eliminated charity and substituted for faith a mere formal- 
ism of worship. Thus Nimrod gained dominion; thus 
spiritual tyranny grew up and the church was dominat- 
ed by mere externalism. This is what is meant by Nim- 
rod's might in the earth. This same condition was develop- 
ed during the history of the first Christian dispensation. 
As the inward and beautiful life of the Apostolic age waned 
and died, there were gradually developed the imposing 
ceremonials of the Romish Church. Nimrod became 
mighty in the earth. All spiritual thinking was banished 
from the church. Religion, as a life, died, and in its 
stead there grew up a vast system of superstition which 
held in bondage the nations of the Christian world. 

It is said of Nimrod that "he was a mighty hunter 
before the Lord. " This means that the system called 
Nimrod had a powerful sphere of persuasion about it. 
There was something in the Nimrod doctrine that captivat- 
ed and held men's minds, and allured them on to accept 
a religion out of which had gone all spiritual vitality. 

Think! The very nature of all external religion is 
persuasive; and men are easily ensnared by it, because 
having become external, they easily accept what appeals 
to their sight and natural feelings. They are easily caught 
and captivated by a religion of mystery — a religion on the 
natural plane. A religion that calls for thought, reflection 
and spirituality of character they pass by. This is the 
secret of the hold which the Roman Church has on its 
people. It is also the secret of the rapid growth of that 
cult which we know as Christian Science. Both systems 
are powerful in their persuasiveness. Neither system 
calls for any spiritual thinking. Both appeal to the 

142 



natural man. They are Nimrodism. Both Romanism 
and Eddyism take advantage of the unthinking multitude; 
both bait their teaching with promises of relief from the 
duty of repentance and spiritual purification. Both 
systems are mighty hunters — great in persuasiveness and 
utterly lacking in rationality. Both systems are accepted 
by the people who do no thinking, but yield their minds 
as prey to Nimrod. 

Think of what is said of Nimrod's kingdom: "The 
beginning of his kingdom was Babel and Erech and Accad 
and Calneth, in the land of Shinar." The idea is not 
that of the founding of these cities by a man named Nim- 
rod ; the idea is that of the beginning and extension of the 
doctrine, in the Ancient Church, which placed the all of 
religion in mere external things. 

These cities with their inhabitants already existed, but 
Nimrodism began in Babel and extended its baleful in- 
fluence over all the places mentioned. We see the same 
thing in the Christian Church. The beginning of the 
Papal dominion was in Italy and it gradually extended 
itself over Europe. Things have a beginning somewhere. 
But something more than a natural locality is meant by 
Babel. Babel is the Scripture name for the self love out 
of which grow all the forms of spiritual dominion over 
men's souls. The Babel of Nimrod was the selfish love 
of the natural heart in which the doctrine, that religion 
consists in the observance of mere ceremonies, found its 
beginning. It was so in the Ancient Church; and it is so 
today. Spiritual dominion begins in the Babel of a selfish 
heart and extends its influence to all the relations of life. 
We must be on guard against Nimrod. Let us therefore 

143 



cling to the internal things of the church and regard all 
external forms as the formalities of religion. 

THE JOURNEY FROM THE EAST: THE TOWER OF 
BABEL AND THE CONFUSION OF TONGUES 

The supreme purpose of revelation is to teach spiritual 
truth. This is done by the employment of symbols. 
Thus the letter of Divine revelation is structured accord- 
ing to a definite law — the law of correspondence — which 
law expresses the causal relation between spiritual truth 
and the natural symbols by which it is clothed and through 
which it is expresed. 

There can be no doubt about the fact of the prevalence 
of a universal natural language among the people of the 
Ancient Church during the period of the spiritual integrity 
of that church; but the unity of natural language was 
an effect flowing from an internal unity of affection and 
thought in the members of the Ancient Church. What 
their natural language was is a matter for philology to 
decide, if, indeed, it can be decided; but it would prove 
of no special spiritual use for us to know what it was. 

The unity of language is used as a symbol of the unity 
of a deeper and profounder language — the language of 
the soul — the utterance of the church. This is our con- 
cern in the statement: "The whole earth was of one 
language and speech. " Translated into the spiritual 
sense and read in the light of heaven the meaning is this: 
"The whole Ancient Church was possessed of one universal 
doctrine." For by the earth is meant the church. This 
was true of the Ancient Church in its best state. Its 
members, it is true, did not know the Lord in the interior 

144 



way in which He was known in the Adamic Age; but 
they did all know Him and see Him in the light of the 
revelation which was made to them. And they loved 
Him. He stood out before their thought as one — a glorious 
being — a Divine person whom they could see and approach 
through the angel of His presence. They lived their 
life from Him and loved Him from the faith of their hearts. 

This looking up to Him and love of Him opened in 
them the deep fountain of love for one another, for they 
were all children of the good Father in heaven and there- 
fore brothers and sisters in the bonds of an abiding deep 
spiritual affection. They were, in other words, a brother- 
hood. They loved each other and were in the beautiful 
life of charity. Love to the Lord and the neighbor was 
their very life; and the language of the church, in them, 
was the language of love to God and to each other. This 
was universal. "The whole earth was of one language 
and speech." That the term language is employed in the 
Sacred Scriptures to represent doctrine is evident to all 
students of the Divine Book. The prophet in treating of 
the future state of the church in which science will be 
regarded as serviceable to its intellectual life says: "In 
that day shall five cities in the land of Egypt speak the 
language of Canaan. " And in another place it said of 
the Lord: "I will turn to the people of a pure language 
that they may all call upon the name of the Lord to serve 
Him with one consent." In each of these instances no 
reference is made to natural language. The meaning 
becomes clear only as we think of natural language as 
the symbol of the universal doctrine of love to God and 
man that prevails in a true church. 

145 



The Ancient Church, in its beginning, knew and used 
this language. It was the language of the soul. 

But the Noetic Church lost this heavenly language. 
The reason for its loss is clearly stated in the Divine alle- 
gory: "It came to pass when they journeyed from the 
East." How expressive the symbolism! The church 
had one universal doctrine as long as it lived near the Lord 
and cultivated in the minds of its members a knowledge 
of and love for the internal spiritualities of religion. The 
Adamic Church fell when it left Eden. The Noetic Church 
fell when it left the east. The east, where the sun rises, 
is the symbol of the Lord from whom comes the light of 
of life. Thus to dwell in the east, spiritually understood 
is to live near the Lord and derive from Him the life of 
love to Him and to our fellow men. To journey from 
the east, spiritually interpreted, is to close the mind to 
the Lord and the internal things of His Kingdom. 

This is what the Noetic Church did. This has been 
the sad history of every church that has declined and 
passed away. Each of the old and consummated dis- 
pensations of religion departed gradually from its original 
state of love into the mere observance of externals. 

We should learn a lesson from this. The New Church 
is an internal church. Not that it is not also external; 
but the internal things of heavenly life are the essentials 
of the church, and forms of worship are mere matters of 
clothing. Simple or elaborate, they have no other signifi- 
cance or use. We are safe as long as we dwell in the east. 
We come into trouble and begin to lose our spiritual life 
as a church, the very moment we turn our minds out and 
down to mere external things. This sad state is pictured 

146 



to us in what is said of the people who journeyed from the 
east. It is said: "They found a valley in the land of 
Shinar and dwelt there." A mountain, as an elevation 
in nature, represents a high state of spiritual life. Here 
is where the church should dwell; for while the church 
must be in the world it must not be of the world. Its 
mission is a high and holy service to human souls; and to 
properly perform it, the church must dwell on the moun- 
tains of love to God and man. 

A valley is a depression in nature; and in the symbology 
of the Holy Word is used to represent an external life. So 
that when it is said: "They found a valley and dwelt 
there," the truth expressed is that the Ancient Church in 
departing from the internal things of doctrine and life 
came into a low external state, and in that state cultivated 
a love for mere ritual — for the raiment of religion as things 
of more importance than the inward and enduring things 
of the spirit of the church. The church dwelt in a valley. 

There is a great warning in this story. Those of us 
who incline to the ornate and the beautiful in worship, 
who see that there may be great power in such ultimates 
of worship, should be careful not to give such externals 
too great importance; for there does lurk a mighty danger 
in them — the danger of allowing them to obscure in the 
mind the deeper and real essential things of the church. 

We are told in this allegory that when the people de- 
scended into the valley of Shinar they said: "Go to, let 
us build us a city and a tower." Here we have the story 
of one more step in the decline of the Ancient Church. In 
departing from the Lord, the church forsook the high 
things of ideal and life and became external. What could 

147 



grow out of this state other than the desire to build up a 
system of teaching with lofty pretensions of spirituality, but 
utterly lacking all the elements of love and truth? This 
is what is meant by the city and towers said to have been 
built in the valley of Shinar. The Ancient Church, in 
this, its last stage of decline, invented false doctrines and 
adopted artificial methods of salvation. Its doctrines 
fostered the love of self, inflated human intelligence with 
the thought of its greatness; and above all, they encour- 
aged and developed the worst forms of spiritual dominion 
over human souls. 

In this respect the Babel builders of the Ancient Church 
have come to life and done their work over again in the 
Christian Church. 

Think! The men who journeyed from the east, when 
they came into the valley, said: "Go to, let us make brick 
and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone; 
and slime had they for mortar.' 1 Stones are Divine 
creations, and in the Scriptures, in a good sense, represent 
Divine truths revealed by the Lord to man. As no man 
can make a stone, so no man can make a truth. Bricks 
are artificially made stones. God never, in any direct 
way, made a brick. Therefore, bricks represent falsities — 
things that look like truths, but which when examined in 
the light of heaven reveal their true nature. 

How easy from this correspondence it is to see the 
meaning of this part of the Divine allegory: The Ancient 
Church, in this final stage of its fall, turned entirely away 
from the Lord and His truth to self love and self intelli- 
gence and constructed its city of doctrine and its tower of 
life from the coinage of its own depraved will and fallen 

148 



intellect. Brick and slime were the material the church 
built with. 

Then came the final end — the judgment of the church. 
It is told in allegorical form under the story of the con- 
fusion of tongues and the dispersion of the people. The 
Ancient Church broke up into confused sects, each sect 
going forth to propagate its doctrines. It ceased to be a 
church. 

These two dispensations, the Adamic and the Noetic, 
cover the prehistoric religious life on the earth: and the 
Genesis account of them, when understood in its spiritual 
sense, connects these prehistoric Churches with the his- 
toric Jewish dispensation of religion and thus gives spiritual 
unity to the Old Testament. 

Aside from this interpretation of these early Chapters of 
the Word, we have no account of the beginnings of heaven- 
ly life in man. And now that science has rendered a 
literal interpretation of them impossible, this opening of 
their inner meaning by the Lord restores them to the 
Church and establishes rational faith in them as a part of 
God's divine revelation in the Word. 

End 



149 



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